The Mon­key review – Theo James goes ape

“The thing with this toy mon­key is that the peo­ple around it all die in insane ways,” Osgood Perkins told Empire Mag­a­zine ear­li­er this year, refer­ring to the vil­lain of his new film. ​“So, I thought: ​‘Well, I’m an expert on that. Both my par­ents died in insane, head­line-mak­ing ways.’” The son of Antho­ny Perkins and Berry Ben­son (who did indeed die in insane, head­line-mak­ing ways) demon­strates a remark­able self-aware­ness and sense of humour here; some­thing that has informed all of his work, from his bit parts in Legal­ly Blonde and Not Anoth­er Teen Movie to Nico­las Cages’ heavy met­al wax­work of a ser­i­al killer in Lon­glegs. He’s a nepo baby, but one of the good ones, of late using his clout to turn out a series of weird, brac­ing­ly orig­i­nal hor­ror movies – the lat­est of which is adapt­ed from a Stephen King short sto­ry about a malev­o­lent musi­cal monkey.

Said mon­key comes into the pos­ses­sion of twins Hal and Bill Shel­burn (played by Chris­t­ian Con­very as chil­dren and Theo James as adults) after their pilot father dis­ap­pears. Despite its deeply cursed vis­age, the curi­ous pre­teens are fas­ci­nat­ed by the mon­key, who – when wound with the key in his back – per­forms an omi­nous drum­ming rou­tine. It doesn’t take long before Hal and Bill realise that the mon­key has a mind of its own: when you turn the key, some­body dies. (In shock­ing and vio­lent fashion.)

Under­stand­ably the chil­dren are shocked by this turn of events, but as chaos unfolds around them, Hal and Bill take dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent stances on whether they should keep turn­ing the key (this seems like a no-brain­er but who am I to ques­tion the infal­li­ble log­ic of a hor­ror film about an evil mon­key toy). Flash for­ward, and the broth­ers are estranged; Hal is a meek super­mar­ket employ­ee with a teenage son he bare­ly sees. The death of a rel­a­tive sends the twins on a col­li­sion course to reunit­ing – and wouldn’t you know it! That darn mon­key is up to his old tricks.

If Lon­glegs was a study in per­va­sive dread, The Mon­key opts for quick fire thrills and spills. The deaths rival Final Des­ti­na­tion in cre­ative gore, the blood spat­ter is plen­ti­ful, and Theo James is tasked with a juicy dual role which calls into ques­tion if the entire film indus­try has been sleep­ing on his tal­ent by send­ing him off to work in the Guy Ritchie gulag. Don’t look for too much in the way of lore though – any ques­tions about The Monkey’s prov­i­dence or moti­va­tion are futile, miss­ing the entire point of a film about a mys­te­ri­ous haunt­ed toy. In this way, the film has some­thing in com­mon with Lon­glegs, whose super­nat­ur­al third act reveal had a love-it-or-loathe-it effect on audi­ences. Perkins has always veered towards the fan­tas­ti­cal in his film­mak­ing, and here it feels a lit­tle more loose and wacky, jux­ta­posed with the weight of trau­mat­ic grief that Hal and Bill must con­tend with.

Yet for all the fun that The Mon­key has to offer in its vio­lent set pieces, there’s some­thing under­whelm­ing about the direc­tion the film takes, veer­ing into sen­ti­men­tal ter­ri­to­ry for its final act that under­serves both James’ spir­it­ed per­for­mance and the irrev­er­ent tone of the film. It’s this sac­cha­rine script­ing and a hap­haz­ard approach to the plot beyond the cre­ative dis­patch­es that ulti­mate­ly ham­string the film – while there’s some nov­el­ty in its glee­ful, car­toon lev­els of vio­lence and James’ turn as a fed-up wit­ness to The Monkey’s blood­lust, there’s not quite enough sub­stance to sep­a­rate it in the crowd­ed field of ​‘cursed doll’ movies. It’s a good time, but not a great time – though with­in the canon of Stephen King adap­ta­tions, it’s def­i­nite­ly among the more fruit­ful offer­ings to make it to screen.