“The Monkey” is the newest installment in the ever growing cinematic universe of Stephen King adaptations. 

It is certainly a new installment. 

The film is based on a short story of the same name published in 1980, right in the middle of King’s self-professed eight-year stretch of “heavy cocaine usage” and this movie certainly lends credibility to that claim. 

The premise is quite simple, par for the course for such a massively read writer like King, and primarily follows Hal Shelburn (Theo James) a boy who comes into possession of a terrifying, drum banging toy monkey that upends his adolescence before returning 25 years later to do so again. 

The monkey has a key in its back and once that key is turned,  it starts banging those drums and that means someone is about to die and probably in the most absurd way possible. 

The film starts with a cameo from Adam Scott, who is always a delight, in the role of Hal’s father Petey. Petey is in possession of the toy and tries to get rid of it by returning it to the pawn shop he acquired it from. 

The monkey bangs those drums and the pawn shop broker is impaled by a harpoon. The first of many over-the-top death scenes, a full 13 characters are killed on screen in the film’s 78-minute run time or a kill every six minutes on average. 

I only mention the totals to support my claim that the kills are all that this movie has going for it and if they were to be removed the movie would be practically unwatchable. 

To be fair, the kills are fun in a dark and twisted way that will delight many and disgust even more but the film commits the cardinal sin for a horror movie: it’s boring. 

The entire appeal of a horror movie is tension, suspense or even fear when it’s done right, but this film leans more into the dark comedy than the straight up horror that King originally penned and definitely for the worse. 

The film’s director, Osgood Perkins’, last project was the Nicolas Cage led “Longlegs” that I have not seen but am told takes itself very seriously and presents as a straight-up horror film. 

Perkins pulls a complete 180 with this film and any chance for this movie to take itself seriously is gone within the first few minutes as a result of the aforementioned harpoon incident. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with a movie not taking itself seriously but the caveat is that if you are going to fully commit to a dark comedy, you have to have something else to make up for it. 

Whether that’s likable characters or a riveting narrative, there has to be something for an audience to sink their teeth into if all hope of creating real tension is thrown out the window. 

This film has nothing of the sort. 

The dialogue is just plain bad. The performances are one-note, mainly due to writing and not for lack of effort on the actor’s part. 

The kills are inventive but never happen to anyone we have time to care about so once you get past the initial shock or laugh, you’re right back to being disinterested. 

The only people that care less about the victims dying than the audience are the other characters. Hal has a twin brother in this movie and (spoiler alert) he is killed right in front of him in the film’s climax and Hal does not register it in the slightest. 

Relatives and strangers alike meet grizzly ends and no one seems to care. If the characters cannot be bothered to care then neither can the audience and that leaves little room to emotionally invest.  

This air of nihilism permeates every scene of this movie and makes it impossible to even begin to like a character, let alone care what happens to them. 

The toy monkey could have killed every single character on screen all at the same time and I would have been as unmoved as Hal when his brother eats a bowling ball shot out of a make-shift cannon. 

Theo James really does his best to carry this movie but to no avail. In his defense, there’s really nothing much for him to do here and any actor would be hard-pressed to make an impact in a movie like this one. 

The film should be enjoyable enough for fans of gory slasher flicks of no real substance that exist purely to point and laugh at when the lady runs into oncoming traffic or whatever, but for fans of King’s other adaptations, which I consider myself one of, this one just misses the mark. 

Official Score: 2/10

Categories: Arts & Entertainment