It’s not a toy. Whatever you do, do NOT call it a toy.
That’s the chilling message from the spooked airline pilot (Adam Scott) who arrives at a pawn shop, covered in blood that’s not his, trying to get rid of the monkey. It’s an old mechanical organ grinder toy — sorry, NOT a toy! — and it’s been causing lots of chaos.
Thus begins “The Monkey,” Osgood Perkins’ latest horror film, an absorbing and stylish if not quite smoothly blended mix of family drama, humor, and blood-and-guts mayhem. Not all of it works, but it’s never uninteresting or uncreative — especially when it comes to finding inventively horrible (or horribly inventive) ways for people to die.
Perkins, basing his story on a 1980 tale by Stephen King, has returned to a few themes from “Longlegs,” his breakout horror hit of last year. For one, he clearly has a thing for creepy dolls. (And after this film, you may never find a monkey’s face cute again.)
More deeply, he likes to explore family dynamics. If “Longlegs” centered on a mother-daughter relationship, “Monkey” focuses on twin brothers, and the dynamic not only between them, but with their parents: an absent father whose departure left a crater, and a mother doing what she can.
It’s not surprising that Perkins should be occupied by both the horror genre and family drama. His father was Anthony Perkins, who in “Psycho” created one of the creepier performances in the genre, and he’s often spoken of using his own experiences in his work.
In “The Monkey,” he also seeks to bring an absurdist, gleefully malignant humor to the proceedings. It’s a lot to bring to one table.
But back to the pawn shop, where the monkey makes his (or her) first appearance. The shop owner is unimpressed with the pilot’s warning of the monkey’s dangers. A second later this is irrelevant, because he’s been disemboweled by an arrow.
The monkey, you see, unleashes murderous mayhem whenever someone turns its key and gets the drums going (that’s the other lesson; never turn the key!) The pilot tries to destroy the critter with a flamethrower.
Then it’s 1999, and twins Hal and Bill Shelburn are looking through their late dad’s closet (Dad was that very pilot). They live with their single mom (Tatiana Maslany), who does her best to parent them. Hal is the sensitive, spectacle-wearing child; Bill is the nasty one who ate most of the placenta at birth. (Both are played by Christian Convery.)
One night, soon after discovering the monkey in a box, the kids boys go with their nice babysitter to one of those hibachi restaurants where they chop and cook at the table. The monkey’s in the car. Soon, the babysitter loses her head, and we don’t mean metaphorically.
Things continue in that vein. Hal, bullied mercilessly by Bill and at school, tells the monkey, who keeps appearing in places like his bedroom or backpack, that he wishes Bill would die. But when the dreaded drums start playing again, it’s Mom who’s the victim.
The two boys are sent to live with their aunt and uncle. Even moving to a small town in Maine does not rid them of the monkey. They try to dump the thing down a well.
And then 25 years pass.
When we next meet Hal, he’s working a low-end job in a store. He has no friends — which is pretty shocking, even in a film full of shocks, because he looks like actor Theo James. (Adult Hal and Bill are played by James, again with a pair of spectacles the key difference.)
Hal is a father now, about to spend some rare time with his teenage son Petey (Colin O’Brien, in a moving turn), whom he only sees once a year — he’s too afraid of what the monkey might do. Hal has, indeed, become the absentee father his own dad was.
Of course, it’s highly inconvenient that just as Hal is on a road trip with Petey, evil brother Bill is embarking on a dastardly plan, which involves, of course, you know who. And the deaths start happening again, with that unique blend of horror and humor.
Does the blend work? That depends partly on how easy it is for you to laugh at cartoonish violence. But combining this with an exploration of brotherly ties and missing dads, as Perkins does, lends the enterprise an uneven feel. Surely there will be an audience for the creatively rendered gore. The rest of us may feel left with a witty, visually arresting, highly inventive quasi-mess on our hands.
“Monkey,” a Neon release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for strong bloody violent content, gore, language throughout and some sexual references.” Running time: 98 minutes. Two stars out of four.
