Straight from the sleeper hit Longlegs, Osgood Perkins immediately jumps to work on Stephen King’s short story that allegedly influences a major plot point in his 2024 horror film. Therefore, it only makes sense that The Monkey shares mutual elements with Nicolas Cage’s doll-making serial-killer film. At the center of it is a bizarre toy monkey—ready to carve its place in the litany of horror’s scariest cursed objects—that brings calamity and death to those in its proximity whenever it beats the drum.
It’s unlike any of Perkins’ earlier films—full of harrowing atmosphere and moving at a pace so placid that it tests audiences’ patience. This time, the ill-natured menace opts for a quicker, tougher, and more explosive (sometimes literally) approach—more like Longlegs minus Cage’s cagey charm, but with double the speed and body count to match. Still, it harbors the director’s most viable formula: an ominous presence that doesn’t always make an on-screen manifestation but looms over everything, ensuring every character remains on edge. But, boy, this shit is bananas—even when the film cranks up the volume and leans into camp without delivering a wholly satisfying payoff.
A Rube Goldberg Machine of Death
The film starts with an exposé—laying down the basic rules of how this killer monkey business works. First and foremost, nobody should call it a toy. It might have been at some point, but, like in many of King’s most dreadful horrors, backstories are sometimes absent. The sentiment is repeated so often that if you took a drink for every time someone shouts, “Don’t call it a toy,” you’d be at least tipsy by the time the film ends (not accounting for the trippy atmosphere). And then, when the titular monkey starts beating the drum, the screen is flooded with dread, an eerie feeling that’s hard to shake. But what everyone should really fear is when it stops—because that’s when things go south, fast.
The opening sequence hints at the worst possible outcome of Murphy’s Law: things that can go wrong will go wrong. The scene unfolds with skeptics and I-told-you-so reactions at opposite ends—it’s like watching a Rube Goldberg machine in motion. That kind of intricate contraption we’ve seen in Tom & Jerry or The Goonies, where seemingly mundane objects set off a chain reaction. When it works, it’s oddly satisfying. But here, it results in death—eerily reminiscent of how fate operates in Final Destination, orchestrating lethal “accidents” through a series of coincidental disasters. This mechanical inevitability is a recurring element in The Monkey; in many ways, the film itself functions like a Rube Goldberg machine, with the cursed object as the trigger.
This mechanic compensates for the film’s rather thin narrative, which revolves around twin brothers, Hal and Will Shelburn (portrayed by Christian Convery as children and Theo James as adults), who discover the sinister relic among their absent father’s belongings. The twins, raised by their nonchalant yet scoffing mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany—an intriguing casting choice), have contrasting personalities. Will, older by three minutes, fully exploits his seniority, constantly belittling Hal. The younger twin, in turn, is repressed, living in fear while secretly hoping to bond with his brother—a connection that doesn’t materialize until the sinister object enters their lives.
Only after the monkey’s killing spree begins do the twins seem to bond, but not in the way Hal envisioned. First, it claims their babysitter in a campy teppanyaki scene; later, it takes their mother’s life. Even when they try to dispose of the murderous artifact, it always finds its way back—relentless, insidious, and refusing to stop until it has claimed everyone close to them. Every death feels shockingly unserious, as if life is a joke and death is the punchline. The pattern sends a chilling message about the disposable nature of human existence, only to undercut it with absurd staging that borders on comedy. The intricate cause-and-effect sequences drive the film forward. Each plot point is destined for banalities, moving from one setup to another with the mechanical precision of clockwork, leaving little room for character development. Yet, the film’s own version of a Rube Goldberg mechanism ensures that even the simplest plot elements are over-engineered into elaborate chain reactions—each culminating in either a gruesome demise or imagery that belongs in grindhouse cinema.
Generational Trauma Revisited
In a similar light as Longlegs, in which generational trauma is a prominent theme covered in its weird cinema peculiarity, The Monkey also works with a similar theme—but this time, it’s more apparent. The perilous events in this film take flight because the twins wish to unravel the secrets of who their father is and, more importantly, why he left. In my reflection on Longlegs, I mentioned that it was a solid entry from a director who, given his history with his family, seems to reconnect with his generational trauma by recapturing the heydays of his family’s legacy.
The twins’ mother never explicitly reveals who their father was. They suspect he might have been a pilot, given the uniform and paraphernalia they found among his belongings, but they never receive confirmation. This event feels semi-autobiographical to Perkins’ childhood—his family had been shrouded in secrecy. His father, Anthony Perkins, lived a life full of hidden truths, including two years of secrecy about his HIV infection. Perkins also believes his mother wasn’t completely honest about everything. While this might be a stretch, his mother’s death as a passenger in the 9/11 tragedy also shapes the story, becoming a turning point in the film’s direction.
This is where the second half of the story takes place: Hal has grown into a father with an estranged son, Petey (Colin O’Brien). The absence of a paternal figure in his life has led him to question his ability to be a father. And when his time with his son is almost up, the monkey starts to catch up again—as if it’s something inherited. It heads towards an unholy reunion that will bring together the twins, the male lineage of Shelburn, and the evil monkey, promising a hell-bent annihilation that mirrors the director’s own generational trauma.
If Longlegs was the way Perkins reconnects with his legacy, The Monkey is how he copes with his parents’ demise. “Everybody dies,” Lois tells her children when the first victim falls on-screen. At that point, the children are still unaware of the implications of those words. But a few deaths later, Hal begins to grasp the idea. Everybody dies in the end, and even with its inevitability, people are still surprised when it happens — whether it’s a peaceful death or the spectacular ones as this film portrays, in which each death tries to be more shocking than the ones before. That’s the film’s stance: instead of drowning in lamentation, people choose to dance, and the film opts for extra laughs—an ironic and nihilistic approach regardless of how grotesque the situation is.
In the end, generational trauma engineered into an over-complicated machination of simple things is what makes The Monkey work. It might not be as serious as Perkins’ previous films, but it’s an entertaining camp horror for those looking to laugh in the face of death.
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