Warning: Spoilers for The Monkey ahead!
In the first few minutes of Osgood Perkins' new Stephen King adaptation, Adam Scott shows up. Though he's on the official cast list, he hasn't exactly been advertised as starring in the film - so there was a quiet gasp among the audience when he appeared on screen. He cautiously walks into a pawn shop wearing a traditional pilot uniform, splattered in blood that does not appear to be his own - holding that damn Monkey.
I'm not sure if it's his mustache or his insistence to the man behind the counter that the Monkey is not a toy: "Do not call it that." It could also be the absolutely insane death that befalls the pawn shop owner after his disrespectful toy comment, but Scott's disturbing and goofy nature sets the bar pretty high for the rest of the film - which, in my opinion, does not deliver. Scott's brief appearance is ultimately the stand-out performance in what is otherwise a three-star movie - and those few minutes alone make a case for why we need to put Adam Scott in more horror-comedies, if not every big-budget horror-comedy, for the rest of time.
Scott plays Captain Petey Shelborn, Hal and Bill’s estranged father who their mother Lois believes just up and left her one day. What we can infer, however, is that he either died or went crazy after trying to dispose of the Monkey via lighting it on fire - and we get a beautiful freeze frame of Scott mid-scream with a can of kerosene in his hand.
And that's it. We never see ol Petey Sr. again, though we do see his belongings when Hal and Bill decide to go through his closet. That’s, of course, where they find the Monkey - and it's all downhill from there: for Hal and Bill, mostly - and just a bit for the viewer. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is a fun, gory romp with kills that put the entire Final Destination franchise to shame. But I spent the remainder of the film wishing we’d get a flashback to Scott's frantic airline pilot - what happened after the kerosene?
It's not lost on me that Petey is also the name of an important character in the first season of Severance, the hit sci-drama where Scott stars as a grieving widow named Mark Scout who decides to undergo a controversial procedure at the hands of a mysterious, cult-y company known as Lumon that quite literally divides his work life and home life. As dark as Severance is, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. Season 2 begins with an angry Mark who doesn’t know where his friends and colleagues are - so he effectively trolls his supervisor into getting them back. It's that promotional photo you've seen everywhere of him holding a red ball, smiling rather suspiciously.
What I'm trying to say is: if Severance and The Monkey weren't evidence enough, we need Scott in more horror. You might have forgotten that he starred in 2015's Krampus, about the freaky Santa Claus-adjacent monster from Austro-Bavarian folklore. He also starred in the 2017 Netflix pic Little Evil, which more or less serves as a genre film that is both a parody and tribute to The Omen - and he was, once again, an exasperated father trying to figure out what the heck is going on (and why his step-son’s eyes keep glowing red).
Some performers just belong in a certain genre, while others make a cameo and stick out like a sore thumb. Scott was so effortlessly folded into the new Perkins pic that it's hard to imagine anyone else in those first few moments. If you need me, I'll be off campaigning for a spin-off prequel series about Capt. Petey Shelborn and how he came into possession of the Monkey - and what the heck happened after.
The Monkey is in theaters now. For more, check out our chat with Tatiana Maslany about the movie's most shocking death.
