A darkly funny adaptation of the classic Stephen King short story about a demonic toy—from the director who you brought you Longlegs
One of the all-time classic horror tropes is haunted or cursed objects—from the classic 1902 short story The Monkey's Paw to my personal favorite as a child, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps classic Say Cheese and Die.
Osgood Perkins, fresh off of last year's delightfully disturbing Longlegs, is trying his hand at the cursed object trope, and has adapted The Monkey, a classic Stephen King short story about a cymbal-clanging, demonic toy monkey that brings death wherever it goes.
His take on it, however, is less foreboding and more darkly absurd—and at times rip-roaringly funny. I say this, of course, as a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan, so I realize my gallows-humor take may not be representative of the average person. I laughed A LOT throughout its tight hour-and-a-half runtime, as did most of the audience on the sneak-preview Thursday night pre-premiere showing in Atlanta.
The Monkey is not like Annabelle, which offers a different take on an evil toy, and instead is more akin to the entries in the Final Destination franchise with its shockingly horrific deaths. The story centers on two twin brothers who experience a lifetime of tragically random deaths because of the monkey's presence. Whenever its key gets wound up, within a matter of hours someone close to it will die—horribly, grotesquely, and painfully. There's not too much plot to speak of, mostly just our hero trying to stop people from turning said key.
The pleasure in watching comes from the shocking kill scenes, which are extremely creative and a master class in depicting truly messed-up ways to perish. It's gory, but in an over-the-top sort of way, like the final fight scene in Kill Bill Volume One. I never squirmed or got grossed out, and if you need recent comparison, it's got maybe 5% of the gore of The Substance, which is nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Do with this information what you will.
Overall, it's a fun ride that scratches the itch of missing spooky season. I always love a good trip up to Maine in a Stephen King adaptation, and the set and production design is fantastic. There's also some great cameos—we get brief comedic performances from Adam Scott, Elijah Wood, and Tatiana Maslany. The tone may not work for a lot of people, but folks who like their horror with their tongue planted firmly in cheek will enjoy it.
Baseline Score: 7/10.
POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, new NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.
