While I will admit I am the first to grumble about the excess of mediocre Stephen King adaptations coming out these days, The Monkey sparked my least irksome reaction yet. That is because, one, it’s not a remake, and two, it’s directed by Osgood “Oz” Perkins. Longlegs may not have won me over as much as it did, well, everyone else, but Perkins is one of our more interesting directors of genre right now. At the very least, you know you’re in for something strange.
What may not work for some King fans — or anyone absolutely intolerant of mixing genres — is Perkins’ tonal shift. King himself has always had something of a drollness to his author’s voice, so it’s not a shocking choice to inject levity in the ill-fated journey of Hal Shelburn. The film seizes the desired amounts of doom and dread of that titular object, however, and in a very Perkins sort of way, The Monkey is now far more of a dark comedy. Mind you, the humor here is more gallows than shallow, and it sidesteps the lampshading we see too much of in modern media.
To work as a film, King’s original short story required some narrative padding, and Perkins does so by introducing subplots unique to his film. Primarily, main character Hal (played by Theo James) now has an identical twin (also played by James), and Hal’s son (Colin O’Brien) is estranged and on the verge of being legally adopted by his stepfather (Elijah Wood). Conceiving messy families is something that Perkins does reasonably well, and the Shelburns are some of his most entertaining work so far. Oddly, though, the women here aren’t as fleshed out as the ones in Longlegs or The Blackcoat’s Daughter; Tatiana Maslany, Sarah Levy, Laura Mennell and others are just female fodder in this tale of moronic men.
While the story here is not all that compelling — I am of the mindset that not everything needs a message, much less one of importance or urgency — The Monkey operates best as a road-trip tragicomedy. One grislier than others, but even still, it fits into that category of films where characters get behind the wheel to escape their troubles. And as a bonus, the glaring theme of fate adds texture wherever Perkins neglected to fill in the whole picture. My experience with The Monkey was marginally improved once I took it as a dumb misadventure rather than anything straightforwardly horror or even thoughtful.
Of course, The Monkey will and can be classified as horror, on account of the over-the-top deaths shown throughout the film. The body-count reaches double-digits — triple-plus once you look at the bigger picture — much to my own delight. You would expect to become desensitized with every exploding head and body, yet that moment thankfully never arrived, at least not for me. These gruesome beats are predictably placed and arguably generic, but they add spice to an otherwise unremarkable story.
Deep and thought provoking this monkey ain’t, but apropos of ephemeral entertainment as well as cartoonish violence and shock-button thrills, the film’s more of a hoot than a snore. Theo James also gets to play around and be more than just a pretty face. Easily, he along with Perkins’ flair for funny fatalities and irreverence toward trauma are the highlights of a nonessential yet better-than-expected King adaptation.
The Monkey opens in theaters on February 21.
Tales from the Paulside 
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