The Monkey review: Longlegs director Osgood Perkins embraces his silly side in gory, surprisingly existential horror comedy

"Everybody dies, and that's life," Hal and Bill's mother Lois tells them after their babysitter Annie Wilkes (a neat, not-so-subtle nod to Stephen King's Misery) gets into a grisly accident at a teppanyaki restaurant. "I'll die, you'll die. All your friends will die, and their families, and their pets," her bizarre pep talk continues, "... let's go dancing."

As evidenced by its marketing (more on that later), a lot of people perish in Osgood Perkins' horror-comedy The Monkey. Unlike the similarly-themed Final Destination, though, it has something profound to say, all be it with a maniacal grin: death has already won if you spend your life in fear of it. The reaper is coming for us all, so you might as well boogie until he rocks up. It's not advisable, however, to get yourself involved with a creepy-looking conduit of evil that seriously speeds up the proceedings…

Based on King's short story of the same name, The Monkey opens in the late 1990s, as sweet-natured Hal Shelborn (Sweet Tooth's Christian Convery) and his asshole twin brother Bill (also Convery) stumble across the titular toy while raiding their absent father's closet. "Organ grinder monkey, like life," Hal reads from the box, before his sibling teases, "Lifelike, dumb shit." "No…?" Hal whispers to himself, looking puzzledly at the lid as Bill grabs a deck of cards illustrated with scantily clad women and leaves the room. 

It doesn't take long for Hal to realize why the phrase is mixed up. Turns out, winding the key on the sinister simian's back sets off an unpredictable countdown of sorts, before the thing picks a victim at random to off in gruesomely inventive ways. You won't know who ("it doesn't take requests") or when, but you'll know its horrible handiwork when you see it. There's no real rhyme or reason as to who it smites, it's just down to chance and luck. Like a magic, macabre game of Russian Roulette. Like…well, life.

Gorilla marketing

To tell you why the key keeps getting turned would be spoiling the few surprises the film has up its sleeve but it does, despite Hal and Bill's best efforts to dispatch of the murderous monkey. When chopping it to pieces doesn't work, the pair chain it inside its container and throw it down a well and for 25 years, all is good. So long as you don't count the scars it has left behind, anyway.

In the present day, we catch up with Hal (Theo James) as he's gearing up to spend his one-week-a-year with his son Petey (Colin O'Brien). The limited contact is his choice, tragically, as he's terrified the monkey will reappear someday and pass the curse on to those closest to him – not that he'd tell Petey, his ex-wife, or her new eccentric author husband (Elijah Wood) that. He might just have to, though, when his plan to take Petey to theme park Horror Haven is quickly derailed by a panicked call from his now-estranged brother; the monkey is back and this time, they can't stop until it's vanquished.

Bloody carnage ensues as Hal sets out to find the pesky primate, with Perkins conjuring up a plethora of weird and wonderful kills. Much has been made of The Monkey's gore and it certainly doesn't disappoint – that said, once you've seen one person exploding into chunks, the others that follow don't pack so much of a punch. After the director's more somber works, it's fun to see him step into splatterpunk territory. There's an argument to be made that he should've been here the whole time.

Given his creativity in that arena, it's a shame that the trailers spoil the majority of the gnarly deaths. While the teasers obviously don't provide context for the devilish demises, you'll know how certain scenes are going to end just as they're being setting up, which zaps them of much-needed tension and robs them of their gasp-worthy moment; that nervous chuckle when you realize what you've actually just witnessed. It's a baffling decision from NEON's marketing team, who did such a stellar job of keeping certain plot points – and Nicolas Cage – hidden from the promos for Perkins' previous hit Longlegs.

More than gore

Fortunately, the movie has more going on behind the bloodshed than most are probably anticipating. It's not often in films, especially in horror, that twins really don't get along. Given that the story is inspired by a King creation, I was expecting the brothers to come together to best the beast, but there's none of that heartwarming bravery here – and it's kind of refreshing (even if Bill being such a jerk does render a late-stage twist disappointingly obvious).

James is fantastic in the dual role, cementing himself as so much more than the pretty face fans wrote him off as following his performances in the Underworld and Divergent series. Hal and Bill couldn't be more different; one skittish and sensible, the other brash and broken and given that they don't look all that different, in terms of their clothes etc, it's quite astonishing how effectively he sets them apart. If only Perkins had come up with more interesting ways than over-the-shoulder shots to position them on screen together, and matched up to cinematographer Nico Aguilar's stellar work elsewhere.

Every actor in The Monkey is clearly having a ball, from supporting players Rohan Campbell (fabulous as a shaggy-haired skateboarder who gets mixed up in the ape's antics) to Tatiana Maslany, whose brief appearance as Hal and Bill's mom sets the campy tone for the rest of the flick, while also anchoring its touching, emotional throughline. There are a few delightful cameos, too, one of which King – who often inserts himself into adaptations of his tales – would be proud.

Perkins has stated that when he was writing The Monkey, he was thinking a lot about the deaths of his mother, Berry Berenson, who died in the September 11 attacks, and his father, Psycho actor Anthony Perkins, who passed away from AIDS-related causes when the filmmaker was just 18 years old. He's evidently well versed in the universal feeling of grief but also the more unique shock of losing someone suddenly and horrifically, and it's actually rather beautiful how he blends that heartache into a movie this goofy and energetic. The Monkey isn't afraid to pose existential questions but whenever Perkins senses things getting a little too deep, he confidently breaks away to a decapitated head, a smiling portrait at a funeral, or a red-eyed chuckling chimpanzee and undercuts it. It might be a horror, but it's a laugh riot, too. It's all things, all at once. Just like life.

The Monkey releases on February 21. For more, check out our picks of the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.