Monkey Gone To Heaven
Osgood Perkins Escapist Horror
My mom is in Florida for about two months seeing her sister Ruthie. I can’t imagine what going from Richmond, Virginia to Florida is like right now, but I have to imagine it’s about as stark a culture shock as you can get on the Eastern Seaboard.
We dropped her off with my Aunt Judy, dad’s sister, who is also a reader here. She asked me about the direction of this Substack, which had mostly gone to movie reviews this year. I said I had needed time to process the world, I didn’t want to be another voice shouting.
I’m still trying to think about how to contribute positively to discourse right now, in a time when it is needed more than ever. I went to a 50501 rally earlier this month and I’ll go to another. It was enlightening just how lost so many people feel right now, people that want to be involved. People that are mad for the right reasons.
I want to write about that, and I will again. So much of my personal time was tied up in conversations about the future that writing felt like an escape for me. I appreciate the people who read this, because it allows me space to untangle the threads that are weaving in my brain and the conversations I have about those threads help me see the world in a new light.
Escapism is important. We need to recharge and detox our brains. We need to have things that bring us joy for the sake of enjoyment. But escaping can be a dangerous cliff, a tool depression uses to disempower you. Movies are a form of escapism for me, a place I sought refuge in my youth. I’m fortunate that I get to escape with a group of friends once a week.
We talk a lot about the world, the movies we saw and our lives. We also get to see great works of art, every week. A collaborative effort that pulls from almost every artistic medium to coalesce into brilliance or chaos. It’s fun and fulfilling.
Osgood Perkins understands the value in escape and also the need to confront reality, those two ideas are on display in his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey, from a short story collection published in 1980. Perkins swings for the fences here, with a philosophical take on death filtered through a grossout horror comedy, and he got a walk-off triple.
The movie takes King’s story, throws it in a blender with Final Destination and Child’s Play and turns out a gory, delicious mess. A surprise cameo in the cold open shows airline pilot Petey Shellburn trying to return an organ grinder monkey doll to an antiques shop. The owner lets him know that they don’t take toys as returns and Petey is adamant that the doll is no toy, no it is a weapon of evil. That catastrophe follows. The shopkeeper should have listened, as the monkey bangs it’s drum and a freak accident takes the owner’s life.
Petey flees the scene and his life, leaving behind a wife (Tatiana Maslany) and two twin boys, Hal and Bill (Christian Convery). Lois Shellburn is coping with her flyboy husband flying the coop, so much so that she neglects her two boys. Bill bullys his “little” brother by telling him he’s the reason their dad left and pulling classmates in on the harassment. Hal fantasizes about killing his brother. Lois busies herself in the kitchen, oblivious to the torture her children are both enduring.
The first third of the movie feels very much like a Stephen King coming of age horror story, like Carrie or It. Even though it was a stark departure from the source material, it felt right. That’s one of the best parts of Perkins’ vision, he adapted a Stephen King story into a Stephen King movie and obliterated the source material. Some people will probably be mad about it, but who cares?
As the boys are going through their dad’s closet of mementos, collected from a life on the road, Hal finds the Organ Grinder Monkey, now back in their possession. How did it get there? This is a movie that has fun with its medium. If you bog yourself down in questions of reality, you miss the maniacal genius at play here. It never pretends at real world logic, but it defines its logic at the beginning and it stays consistent.
Every time the key is turned, the monkey takes a life. The boys learn that indirectly when a tragic accident at a hibachi restaurant beheads their babysitter. One of the funniest funeral scenes ever follows, which should serve as a break out for Nicco Del Rio as the incompetent priest giving the funeral service. Perkins’ script takes subtext and turns it into dialog. In this world, people say the inside thoughts outloud, as filtered through Hal’s eyes.
After the funeral, Lois tells the boys that death is going to come for everyone they love one day. It will come for her and it will come for them. Then, she takes them out dancing. It was the best day of Hal’s life. Bill and their classmates make sure of that, by turning up the harassment. Mocking his relationship with the monkey and assaulting him with bananas.
Hal turns the key again, in a desparate attempt to rid himself of his older brother and instead the monkey claims the life of their mother. A boomerang anuerysm is the official diagnosis, but Hal knows it was his fault. He turned the key. He tries to chop up the monkey with a cleaver and finds that it bleeds. That fact doesn’t stop his rampage.
When they are shipped up to Maine with their Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy) and Uncle Chip (Osgood Perkins), the monkey follows. Hal knows he has to confide in Bill, who wants confirmation. The monkey claims Chip and the boys know they have to rid themselves of this cursed doll. They lock it up in chains and toss it to the bottom of a well at their Aunt Ida’s house.
From there, we are introduced to Hal (Theo James) in the present. He doesn’t speak to his brother or his aunt. He only sees his ex-wife (Laura Mennell) and son Petey (Colin O'Brien) once a year. He has no friends and works as a cashier at a grocery store. His boss is a disconnected stoner who vapes in his office all day. This time, things are different. Petey (Colin O'Brien) is going to be adopted by his ex-wife’s new husband Ted Hammerman (Elijah Wood).
Ted is a leading expert in his field, which seems to be as a rich grifter selling books about religion and business. Once this happens, he won’t have to see his son anymore. Hal wants to be involved in his son’s life, but he fears that the monkey could come back at any time and claim him. So, Ted says, they should take this week and enjoy it because it’s the last time they’ll have together.
Hal doesn’t put up a fight, because he thinks it is better than telling the truth. On the first night of their week, Hal’s fears are justified. Bill calls him to let Hal know that their aunt died in a horrific, tragic fashion. The monkey is on the loose. That same night, a woman is exploded in a swimming pool when an air conditioner comes loose and falls into the pool just as she jumps. Hal sees the whole, horrific thing.
The rest of the movie deals with Hal coming to terms with death and his past. Perkins manages to make commentary on how so many people deal with death. As the monkey terrorizes their second childhood home town, cheerleaders show up at the scenes of the crime cheering on death. It feels like a commentary on people’s obsession with death that ignores the real trauma of the people involved.
The way the realtor runs an estate sale and says they earned over “a hundred dollars” is sharp commentary on the people who exploit death for their own profit. I will say that this movie is a decidedly male affair. The women who exist here all die horrific deaths. We don’t get to see much of them as people, but one of the commentaries Perkins’ makes is how deadly emotional repression in men is. It never felt antagonistic toward women, I just wish both Maslany and Levy had been given more to do. Maslany, in particular, is exceptional when given room to work like she had in Orphan Black.
Some of the film didn’t work as well for me, the way the school kids bullied Hal felt hamfisted. A nightmare featuring Lois in the second half of the movie felt too by the numbers. None of that mattered when I got to see some of the most insane and over the top kill shots in a movie. The movie is graphic and gory. The kills are inventive and horrific. Most of all, it is fun. The movie knows when to take itself serious and when to let loose.
That’s the biggest message here, on how we can’t control death. It comes for all of us. What we can control is how we treat the people we connect with. By the end of the movie, everything has fallen to ruin. But you can get through anything as long as you’re honest with the people in your life and you take time to go dancing when it all gets too much.