With all of the Stephen King adaptations floating around Hollywood, it’s understandable if you missed The Monkey when it was in theaters earlier this year.
Originally published as a short story in 1980, The Monkey revolves around two brothers who discover a cursed monkey toy that their father purchased for them.
Whenever this monkey is wound up to play the drums, people around it die in horrific ways. And despite multiple attempts, the monkey itself can’t be destroyed.
This film is currently the No. 1 movie on Hulu, and Watch With Us is sharing the three reasons you need to watch The Monkey this month.
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The Film Has a Creepy Tone
The first thing that The Monkey gets right is that it feels like a Stephen King story. Not every King adaptation has managed to recreate the creeping sensation of impending doom that this film does. The early part of the movie with Hal and Bill as children is particularly effective because it’s not as funny as some of the things that happen later.
For a largely inanimate object, the monkey itself is genuinely unsettling. The story never tries to explain exactly what the monkey is or how this toy can cause so much death and destruction. But it looks evil, and there’s tension every time it moves because that’s the sign that someone is going to die soon.
‘The Monkey’ Is Incredibly Well Cast
Theo James leads the cast as twins Hal and Bill Sheldburn, and we’ll get back to him shortly. The entire film has some great performances, but the most impressive was Christian Convery as young Hal and Bill. Convery was the star of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth, and his dual performance in this movie suggests that he’ll have a long career. Bill and Hal have such distinct personas that it’s easy to forget that you’re not looking at two actors. It’s the same kid, and each of his characters gets a different response from the audience. We sympathize with Hal, but hate Bill for how incredibly mean he is to his brother.
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James carries a lot of the film on his shoulders as the adult versions of Hal and Bill, with a heavier emphasis on the former. Older Hal is overly cautious to the point where he has no one in his life to love, because he knows the monkey could take them away. Bill, on the other hand, is completely unhinged. He’s even meaner in the present than he is in the past, and Bill gets an extended flashback late in the movie that explains why he’s so different from his brother.
Elijah Wood only has one scene in the film as Ted Hammerman, the man who married Hal’s ex-wife (Laura Mennell) and the future adoptive father of Hal’s son, Petey Shelburn (Colin O’Brien). There isn’t much room for Ted in this story, but Wood is extremely funny in the role. As for O’Brien, he makes Petey the most human and relatable character in the movie. He doesn’t know anything about the cursed monkey. All Petey knows is that his father has largely shut him out of his life.
Adam Scott also has what amounts to a cameo appearance as Petey’s namesake, Captain Petey Shelburn, the father of Hal and Bill. Intriguingly, we never learn what happens to the first Petey. But given his run-in with the monkey, it was probably fatal. Tatiana Maslany doesn’t share any scenes with her on-screen husband, but she is terrific as Lois Shelburn, the mother of Hal and Bill. Like her future grandson, Petey, Lois has a more down-to-earth persona, and she arguably defines the course of the movie by both her presence and her absence.
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It’s a Darkly Hilarious Horror Comedy
You’re going to see a lot of things in The Monkey that remind you of the Final Destination movies. The monkey can’t physically kill anyone, but the worst of all possible outcomes happens to anyone it marks for death. There are some scary moments, but director Osgood Perkins gradually ramps up the humor surrounding the deaths. That includes the off-screen demise of his character, Chip Zimmer. After the film offers a colorful description of what happened to Uncle Chip, Perkins shows perfect comic timing by revealing what’s left of Chip’s body at just the right moment.
Corin Clark has a wordless cameo as a woman by a hotel swimming pool, and what happens to her is so wrong and so funny at the same time. James’ reaction to the woman’s fate is also amusing, and things escalate as the film heads towards its conclusion. It feels like there’s a lot less realism in the third act, but it’s not a deal-breaker for this movie.
Even some of the non-horror moments have unexpected humor. Nicco Del Rio appears as a priest whose funeral sermons are so terrible that the audience sides with Bill when he tells him to stop talking. Little touches like that weren’t in the original short story by King. But they enrich the movie, and make it more than just a gore fest. Having said that, the finale of The Monkey is wildly over-the-top and takes the gore to a new level. And yet the film still manages to go out on a laugh with the gruesome fate of some unsuspecting characters.
The Monkey is streaming on Hulu.
