Shadows on the Wall | The Monkey

The Monkey

dir-scr Osgood Perkins
prd James Wan, Dave Caplan, Chris Ferguson, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
with Theo James, Christian Convery, Tatiana Maslany, Colin O'Brien, Elijah Wood, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Osgood Perkins, Tess Degenstein, Danica Dreyer, Zia Newton, Adam Scott
release US/UK 21.Feb.25
25/US Black Bear 1h38

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Based on a Stephen King story, this gleefully nasty horror romp feels like a warped twist on the Final Destination franchise, as people die in violently accidental ways that are tinged with pitch-black humour. In this case, the malevolent force is a wind-up toy monkey, but please don't call it a toy. While writer-director Osgood Perkins skilfully creates a creepy atmosphere, the film is funny rather than frightening.

Nice-guy preteen Hal (Convery) is so mercilessly bullied by his twin Bill (also Convery), that he wishes Bill was dead. But when he winds up their long-gone father's mechanical drum-playing monkey, it's their mother (Maslany) who gets it. So the brothers hide the monkey where it can't harm anyone. Now 25 years later, it reappears, and Hal (now James) worries it will target his estranged teen son Petey (O'Brien). But this means that he will need to track down Bill (also James) and idiot slacker Ricky (Campbell), who found the monkey in a yard sale.

Enjoyably, the script retains King's complex characterisations, as each person is a mess of conflicting emotions and dark secrets, driven by urges they can't quite express. So some of these people are scarier than the murderous chimp. While the story revels in this blurry morality and thorny family connections, the film itself is much more flippant, relying on sudden explosions of truly ghastly violence that are played for laughs.

James anchors all of this with two wonderfully divergent performances, as the thoughtful Hal tries to hold his world together while the careless Bill sets out to burn everything down. Even if everyone on-screen is rather cartoonish, these brothers are grounded in James' nuanced interaction with those around him. Rising star O'Brien has a strong screen presence as the annoyed Petey, and both Maslany and Wood have fun in their scenery-chewing roles. As does Scott as the twins' father in a prolog.

There's some serious stuff going on between these characters, although Perkins continually undercuts any gravitas. There are only very brief allusions to issues of grief before Perkins asks us to giggle at another outrageously grisly death. So the carnage begins to pile up as throwaway background noise in the final act. Through all of this, the movie keeps us entertained with its wry sense of humour and filmmaking artistry, but it never takes things to a level that might rattle us in any way.

themes, language, violence 17.Feb.25

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