This past week I watched the new film The Monkey. It is derived from a Stephen King short story of the same name. It centers around two twin brothers who come across a mysterious wind-up monkey. The monkey seems to be the cause of mysterious and elaborate deaths that tear the two brothers apart. Some years later the monkey is the center of a new series of mysterious deaths, and the two brothers must come together to stop the monkey once and for all.
I was really excited for this movie when it first got announced. I love Stephen King adapted movies and it is helmed by Osgood Perkins, the same director of Longlegs. The trailer is very misleading to what the movie actually is. From the trailer I assumed it would be quite similar to Final Destination, but what we got was a strange wannabe dark comedy.
I get what the film was going for, but for me it did not work at all. The opening scene showed promise. It sets up the story quite well and has a crazy opening death scene. I was so onboard. Then we meet the child versions of the main characters and it goes downhill. The characters are so dislikable, even the brother you are supposed to root for is a deadbeat dad and he doesn’t behave like a normal human being.
Moving on from that for now, I hated the comedy in this movie. The dialogue was painfully unfunny, and it was trying so hard to be something it wasn’t. The film would have “comedic” breaks, but it came across as so awkward and there were so many times where I was rolling my eyes. The only things I found amusing were some of the outrageous deaths, and the realtor scene (which is in the trailer).
The brother duo absolutely did not work for me. There is one overly evil brother and one “good” brother. This character type is such a cliché and I was not done well at all. The evil brother is so cartoonishly evil that it was painful. There were some scenes, more so at the end where I was thinking to myself “is this guy for real”.
This is technically a horror film I guess so of course there were so many questionable decisions and a lot of stupid dialogue. The original Monkey story written by Stephen King is around 40 pages long. It is so evident that the screenwriters had trouble making the source material into a feature length film because the writing and how everything plays out is so uneven.
The performances were alright, and the only thing I can really commend is the all-out death scenes. This however leads to another problem I had with the film. You only see a few deaths on screen, the rest are either told by other characters or quick and offscreen. This movie was marketed as a movie that has crazy gore and death scenes, and we don’t even see to the extent they promised.
As you can tell I was very disappointed in this movie. Everyone else I have talked to about it also didn’t really enjoy it so I can’t believe the high ratings and praise this movie has been getting. I think it was an interesting idea done wrong in every way imaginable. If I were you I wouldn’t seek this film out, but if you want to watch it it is on the streaming platforms listed below.
I give this film a ★★☆☆☆ / ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(rent for $19.99 on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Fandango)
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