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| Images courtesy of NEON |
Osgood Perkins has sparked a creative stride with his latest two features. After last year’s Silence of the Lambs inspired horror hit, Longlegs, the son of the late Anthony Perkins is back with an eccentric and interesting take on the cursed object sub-genre. The Monkey is a blood-spattered festival of creative kills, off kilter dialogue, goofy characters and insanely perfected practical gore effects mixed and melded with some impressive CGI.
Perkins hit the scene with 2015’s underground cult flick, The Blackcoat’s Daughter. With each subsequent release, he refines his style and directorial skills by going deeper and deeper into his chosen film palette of weirdness and plot-based oddities. The Monkey is a dark, humor laden flick that plays a little tighter than his previous movie.
Based on the original writing of Stephen King, this is like an extended Twilight Zone episode that just happens to be loaded with absolutely bonkers death scenes, interesting kills and a very weird look at brotherhood that’s defined by utter madness. The adult brothers, played by the talented Theo James, are total opposites of each other, serving up a steaming dish of dynamics that play both sides of the coin, innocence and evil. Perkins' work here is nearly flawless, taking further aim at establishing a phenomenal catalog of films that are both highly original and stylish. The man has his own aesthetic that he continues to mold with this month’s release of The Monkey.
When a set of young twins come in contact with a wind-up monkey, the people around them begin dying in horrible accidents. As things begin to get ugly, they decide to hide the object away where no one can find it. 25 years later, mysterious and outrageous deaths begin to happen again and the wrath of the toy must be dealt with at all costs. The estranged brothers find themselves at odds over the cursed toy and its penchant for death dealing. All hell breaks loose and the twins find themselves in a battle with forces they cannot seem to control. The Monkey sees Perkins with full creative momentum, never repeating his former works by continuing to dabble in a medium that allows him to grow as a director, actor and altogether mastermind of terror.
At its worst, The Monkey does get a bit repetitive at times. At its best, the film is a breath of fresh air that never lets up in its sheer volume of on-screen deaths and satisfying gore. Take the kills from the original Final Destination movies and simply up the ante twelve fold. The ways that people are mangled in this thing will give even the best of the genre a run for their money. With a story written by Stephen King, audiences will feel right at home with narration that's firmly planted in the world of Stand By Me. The Monkey is comfort food for King fans and a dish best served cold with the master's unrelenting penchant for creating grisly scenarios for his main characters and subset of strange support players.
Perkins is quickly becoming known for his slow burn features. Here, he quickly flips the script and shows audiences he's no one trick pony. Where Longlegs was a droning exercise in weirdness, The Monkey is a blast of fun that finally gives us a Theo James wielding the talent he's been holding in all this time. Perkins returns us to a time when horror could be nasty and brutal but also encapsulated in a vest of comedic elements. This is a testament to the fact that the apple did not fall far from the tree. Osgood's father was mostly known for his horrific roles in the Psycho series and other genre films, but always had a flair for dark humor. It's nice to see that legacy live on and spread into modern filmmaking.
-CG