Daniel S. Burton
“Everybody dies and that’s life.”
The King of Horror is back with another adaptation, this one about a killer wind-up monkey… If it bangs its drums, you die.
The Monkey hit theatres on February 21, 2025. Directed by Osgood Perkins of Longlegs fame, The Monkey is an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name, originally published in Gallery magazine (November 1980) and in his short story collection Skeleton Crew (1985).
The Monkey is an existential black comedy above all else. Faithful to the story’s ridiculous premise, the film’s monkey is described “like life,” not “life-like.” The monkey’s ability to kill appears completely random, and each death is absurd and unpredictable. Despite the characters’ attempts to control or prevent the monkey’s killings, its victims always die — like life, indeed. One thing is clear: the monkey does not take requests. The film never explains how or why the monkey kills. It just does. Hence the idea that you never know how death will strike, whether there is a divine reason, or if life and death are just up to luck.
The film’s recurring themes are centered around accepting death as a part of life. One priest literally preaches that “it is what it is” — though he proves the incomprehensibility of death as he approaches a casket and mutters, “Oh fuck.” Another major recurring quote is simply, “that sucks.” Twin brothers Hal and Bill grow up surrounded by death, consoled only by the sentiments of their detached mother until she dies. The monkey haunts their family and Hal and Bill deal with the curse in different ways. Their stories showcase the effects death has on people. Hal hides from his own son for fear of the monkey, highlighting how death can estrage people, while Bill becomes obsessed and enraged with the monkey.
Like death, the monkey is inescapable. It reappears — teleports back into your life — when you least expect it. The monkey can never truly be vanquished. Though it can be accepted, you never find it: it finds you.
A cast of absurd characters truck the story along and add to the absurdity of life. From a swinger uncle and aunt, a too-frank mother, a local burnout, and a parenting guru, The Monkey’s cast alive are just as mind-warping as when dead.
Yet the most powerful part of The Monkey is not its themes, but how it delivers them: with cartoonishly gory death and comedy. The Fredericton theatre was laughing out loud, sometimes uneasily, from opening to end. Characters are either scarred, or, like Hal and his son Petey, hilariously unfazed by the deaths occurring before their eyes.
The film’s deaths are shocking and hit as punchlines and horrors along with the monkey’s drum. Frequent and short-lived, the viewer laughs or cringes and is thrusted onward. A death, a cut, a jump into the next scene (funerals, police scenes, etc.). Though many deaths are punchlines — and the viewer gets desensitized to the deaths along with the characters — the gore is not the point. Each death progresses the plot and narrative themes.
The film is blunt and morbid, but you know the deaths are real for those on screen, despite how funny they often are. The monkey takes a sick pleasure in killing. It begins its kill-song by cocking a grotesque smile, and stares you down with lifeless eyes all the while. The film itself takes a similar pleasure to the monkey, but the audience gets to laugh alongside the little devil.
Horror comedy is a hard line to balance, but The Monkey’s messed up tone hits it right. It is important to take and rate a film for what it is trying to be. So, even if you hate dark humour, or the campy splatter-spectacle, The Monkey, or at the very least Perkins, drums home that there is room for theme and good intent in all modes of storytelling.
The worst part of my experience was learning that the awesome The Monkey popcorn bucket is an AMC exclusive! Let’s start a petition rioting against this madness. Get the monkey bucket to Cineplex STAT!
Buy tickets at the Fredericton Cineplex: cineplex.com/themonkey
