Cymbal monkeys. Terrifying to some, a childhood toy to others. Now, the cymbal monkey has a drum set and kills people. At a glance, this is the premise of director Osgood Perkins’ “The Monkey”, adapted from the short story by Stephen King. 

Released on Feb. 21, Theo James stars as both Hal and Bill, Colin O’Brien plays Petey, the son of Hal, and Tatiana Maslany plays Lois, Hal and Bill’s mother. 

“The Monkey” follows twins Hal and Bill as they find a toy monkey inherited from their absent father. As the boys play with the monkey, they realize that not everything about it follows the laws of reality, as it can kill people and teleport at will. Twenty-five years after the twins discover the monkey and try to get rid of it, the monkey comes back to haunt them and their new lives apart, but how?

Plot

The plot of “The Monkey” while cliché, makes itself unique. The simple trope of taking a childhood stamp and making it scary has been done before. Whether it is Winnie the Pooh, a doll like Chucky or “M3GAN”, or a toy monkey, the trend in recent horror films has been to make something scary that was a core memory for its audience as a child. However, “The Monkey” differentiates itself and makes itself unique by adding a twisted sense of comedy. 

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This movie was surprisingly funny and the comedy was very dark. The film starts by having something tragic happen, and right when the suspense is about to pique, a punchline comes out of nowhere, making the audience laugh uncomfortably. The comedic timing was what made this comedy feel like dark humor. This was unexpected as the movie had a very dark tone before the comedy kicks off. But, the comedy is very welcome as it fills in the spots of the movie that lack in other areas, even if the jokes do not land 100% of the time.

This film does a good job of pacing its story to always keep the audience engaged. Even from the opening scene, the audience is hooked to find out more about this monkey, and the film keeps it this way throughout the whole runtime. It picks up speed right from the beginning and never slows down to the point where the audience gets bored. This is nice because that pacing is exactly what this type of movie needs. Horror movies generally end up having a cool beginning and a kicker ending, but a very boring middle. But, “The Monkey” keeps a good pace to entertain the audience throughout the whole movie.

“The Monkey” has a simple story, which is exactly what a horror movie needs. A horror film should not rely on the story to be the most memorable part, it should be the killer and the way it makes the audience feel. This is what “The Monkey” accomplished, and it is a delight to see. The biggest takeaway from this film was not that there was a perfectly written first second and third act, but how the film was entertaining and paced well.

As a horror movie about a killer monkey, there obviously will be kills. This film does a really good job at making each and every kill feel unique, and no two kills feel even similar. Some kills were reminiscent of kills in the “Final Destination” franchise in the way that they were unpredictable and crazy. This is one of the biggest factors in keeping the audience entertained in movies like this, and “The Monkey” nails it. 

Death is the theme that this film tackles. It is all about how death will eventually catch up with everyone and is not a matter of yes or no, but when and how instead. This was unsettling in a way that added to the quality of the film. The characters address death casually in this film, which gives off an eerie vibe. The mother of the twins Hal and Bill talks to them about death and how they are going to die, and how she is also going to die at some point, and it is just offputting, adding to the eerie vibe and tone of this film.

By far, the weakest part of the plot in this film is the dramatic conflict between Hal and his son, Petey. The very complicated father-son relationship takes up a big part of Hal’s characterization, but at the end of the film, the viewer really does not care much about that storyline. The complicated relationship between this father and son is the least of the viewer’s worries by the end of the film, and makes it seem like part of the movie could have been cut out, especially because this plot line does not get a set in stone resolution.

The parallels between characters in this film redeem part of the characterization. It is easy to see that growing up without a father figure in his life affected Hal. But, because of how the monkey affected Hal in his early years, he ends up pulling the same thing on his own son. This is a good element of Hal’s characterization because his realization that he is doing exactly what his father did to him and his twin affects him in the latter half of the movie, and this adds depth to Hal that he did not have in the first half of the film.

The Horror

Although this movie is advertised as a horror film, horror and scary are not the best ways to describe it. The kills in the film do not come out of nowhere, and there were no jump scares, which is generally a big element in invoking fear and horror in the viewer. But while not the traditional idea of being scary, there are many suspenseful moments where the audience has to sit back and anticipate what will happen next.

The suspense was executed well. Throughout the movie, the viewer has to sit on the edge of their seat and wonder what will happen next. This makes the whole movie feel like the third act of an action film when the big fight scene happens and everything becomes tense, but it feels like this for the entire duration of “The Monkey.” The film keeps the audience engaged by throwing curveballs from different angles for 90 minutes straight.

The gore in this film does not go unnoticed. This was the most disgusting part of the film. The gore was very detailed and it was easy to tell that a significant amount of the budget went into the gore in this film. Gore is a sensitive subject in movies. Some love it, some cannot stand it. But in “The Monkey,” the gore levels up the kills. The gore makes the way some people are killed in this movie more creative. It is more intriguing to see the aftermath of a brutal kill rather than to have the kill take place and immediately forget about it and skip to the next scene, which is what the gore added in this film.

The Visuals 

Some of the visuals in this movie felt off. The framing in this movie felt the same throughout the film. The composition of the shots was centered in the middle of the frame. At times, this was very noticeable because there would be back-to-back scenes where the viewer did not need to move their eyes at all to see everything important. This led to a majority of the film having close-up shots, and not a lot of variety in camera angles and movement. This is only a nitpick, but it is worth mentioning as it might affect some viewer’s experiences.

Even though the framing in this movie was off at times, the visual effects (VFX) were treated well. In a movie centered around a killer toy monkey, one can assume that VFX will be needed. And the VFX in this film was good. The monkey itself looked terrifying and invoked fear with its physical appearance alone. There was nothing that looked fake or blatantly computer-generated in this film, which seems to be a hard concept to execute in Hollywood recently. However, “The Monkey” makes up for its odd framing with good visual effects, a solid story, good comedy, and good horror movie elements.