Monkey see and monkey do, what Ozgood has might not be right for you.

There’s been a long standing fear in Hollywood anytime someone adapts a Stephen King anything. book, novella, or even a tweet. We’ve had some crazy success stories, like Brian Depalma’s Carrie, frank darabont’s the Shawshank Redemption and The green Mile, and to many cinephiles, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. On the other end, we have films like Sleepwalkers, Cujo, and The Dark Tower. Ozgood Perkins, the director of Long Legs and son of Anthony Perkins, is hoping to put his name on the auteur side of the board. is The Monkey as stunning as some felt Long Legs was?

it certainly is gorier. it also feels more mainstream, like the artistic approaches some didn’t like in long Legs were too cumbersome for this violent horror film, and Perkins instead seeks to bring in audiences with a more mainstream level of horror and gore. It doesn’t even really feel like the kind of thing Neon puts out, because it is just a hop, skip, and jump away from Final Destination. The story involves a toy monkey with a drum, and you do not want the monkey to hit the drum. An opening flashback featuring Adam Scott explains why.

Cutting ahead, we see that generational trauma has been passed down to his kids, twins (both played by Christian Convory of Sweet Tooth). These twins are radically different in personality, with Bill being the asshole of the duo, and the first to reactivate The monkey. Then, death comes into their lives. The brothers watch as person after person dies, and they have no control over who. it doesn’t care, it can’t be controlled, but it doesn’t seem to want to kill the one holding the monkey.

We also get a time jump, where the brothers are aged up (now played by Theo James), and things happen that lead the killings to resume. Can it be stopped? will someone spank this monkey? sorry, i had to.

I reject the idea that this is a horror comedy. while it does seem to pick that up toward the end, with its nihilistic approach, it also doesn’t have that consistent tone. these deaths aren’t funny, they are just gory and violent. There is a touch of dark humor from time to time, but much like some other “horror comedies” this year, it really struggles with having to meet a level of extreme violence, and also making it funny. It can’t really do that. I don’t think it is Ozgood Perkins’s strength. However, I was entertained, the acting is solid, and I think horror fans are coming for the elaborate and gory deaths. But, this is not remotely close to a PG-13 rating, and is a hard R, so like I said, it might not be for you. If you don’t do gore, you can’t do The monkey.

as a blind person now, I watch way more horror than I used to, because it is easier to listen to it than to see it. the audio description track here did make me question if it really was going all in on description, as I read and heard about the deaths a while ago, and they were much gorier than I heard described. It isn’t void of gore either, but the timing is sometimes not where I’d want it. Like, you can hear gurgling noises of something happening to someone, and you find out after. gurgling is not dialogue. In my opinion, I probably would have tweaked the audio description a bit. Not a huge disappointment, but not a home run either.

I liked Long Legs better, and even had Nicholas Cage in my top 10 Supporting Actor performances last year. I would encourage Perkins to lean on his strengths, and not cave to mainstream ideology. Arguably, Ari Aster has done that with his newest film opening next month, and the reviews at Cannes were his most mixed so far.

Fresh: Final Grade: 7.4