'The Monkey' Slashes Its Way into Theaters This Weekend
by EG
The Monkey, a violent horror comedy from the director of Longlegs and based on a Stephen King story, hits theaters this weekend on an otherwise sleepy week for Hollywood. It will take on Captain America: Brave New World, which had a solid (if not spectacular) debut last week. The superhero movie is virtually guaranteed to come out on top, but violent horror comedies often find a surprisingly enthusiastic audience. Read on for details.
Via the Associated Press.
It’s not a toy. Whatever you do, do NOT call it a toy.
That’s the chilling message from the spooked airline pilot (Adam Scott) who arrives at a pawn shop, covered in blood that’s not his, trying to get rid of the monkey. It’s an old mechanical organ grinder toy — sorry, NOT a toy! — and it’s been causing lots of chaos.
Thus begins “The Monkey,” Osgood Perkins’ latest horror film, an absorbing and stylish if not quite smoothly blended mix of family drama, humor, and blood-and-guts mayhem. Not all of it works, but it’s never uninteresting or uncreative — especially when it comes to finding inventively horrible (or horribly inventive) ways for people to die.
Perkins, basing his story on a 1980 tale by Stephen King, has returned to a few themes from “Longlegs,” his breakout horror hit of last year. For one, he clearly has a thing for creepy dolls. (And after this film, you may never find a monkey’s face cute again.)
More deeply, he likes to explore family dynamics. If “Longlegs” centered on a mother-daughter relationship, “Monkey” focuses on twin brothers, and the dynamic not only between them, but with their parents: an absent father whose departure left a crater, and a mother doing what she can.
It’s not surprising that Perkins should be occupied by both the horror genre and family drama. His father was Anthony Perkins, who in “Psycho” created one of the creepier performances in the genre, and he’s often spoken of using his own experiences in his work.
In “The Monkey,” he also seeks to bring an absurdist, gleefully malignant humor to the proceedings. It’s a lot to bring to one table.
But back to the pawn shop, where the monkey makes his (or her) first appearance. The shop owner is unimpressed with the pilot’s warning of the monkey’s dangers. A second later this is irrelevant, because he’s been disemboweled by an arrow.
The monkey, you see, unleashes murderous mayhem whenever someone turns its key and gets the drums going (that’s the other lesson; never turn the key!) The pilot tries to destroy the critter with a flamethrower.
Get the rest of the story at the Associated Press.