Ticketworthy! The Monkey

We all know of people that did really well in school as kids, really excelled, and everyone was just so sure they were going to be doctors, or lawyers, or President one day. Cut to twenty years later and you run into that person working at Target. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s safe to say they did not live up to their potential. That’s The Monkey.

Everything about the movie should work. The story of a wind-up toy monkey that is secretly an unstoppable force of evil dedicated to killing one specific family is quirky and fun. It’s directed by Osgood Perkins, the up-and-coming horror director behind Long Legs, written by Perkins and Stephen King, and stars some decent talent in Theo James and Tatiana Maslany. The trailers made it clear that the goal was to invoke the zany horror-comedy antics of classics like Gremlins (with the gore of Evil Dead 2), and I admit to being pretty excited about that. I like King, and I’m a big fan of horror-comedy as a genre.

The problem is, I’m not convinced anyone who worked on The Monkey feels the same way. Almost all of the good jokes and the best gore were in those trailers. Because the titular monkey never speaks and isn’t predictable, the film could have kept escalating to crazier and campier heights. It could have left the audience never knowing what to expect next. Instead, it sort of plods along a fairly simple plot and, outside of one or two inventive kills, doesn’t do much that fans of the genre haven’t seen before. Honestly, despite what gore is present and some strong language, it weirdly never felt more intense than a PG-13 horror movie.

Theo James leads the cast, pulling double duty as two twin brothers being haunted by the demonic toy. James is a good actor who seems like he’s still searching for that one role that fits him like a glove. This isn’t it. Much like most of the rest of the cast, he’s phoning this one in a bit. Not phoning it in is Tatiana Maslany, someone who has had several excellent roles (though mostly on TV) and just needs a star-making hit. This also is not that. Still, Maslany gives her best as the twins’ mother and the scenes she’s in are my favorites in the movie. She’s just not in that many of them.

All in all, The Monkey isn’t a bad movie. It’s just not a good one. I don’t have any particular complaint with the pacing, the dialogue, sound design, or visuals. It’s well-shot and perfectly mixes modern slickness with old-school camp, the jokes that we do get work more than they don’t, even if only just barely, and there’s strong enough emotional stakes underneath the horror for The Monkey to have been a solid addition to the genre. All it’s missing is the intensity that makes movies like this work.

What makes a great horror-comedy film like Gremlins and Evil Dead 2, or the more recent Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, is their dedication to the concept. They go all-in, sometimes further than the audience even wants to go. As a result, they keep you on the edge of your seat and guessing what’s coming next because it could genuinely be anything. The Monkey never feels that way. It feels reserved, like it’s trying to not push anything too far. It’s like a TV comedy sketch where you just know everyone had better ideas but couldn’t do them without the censors coming down hard. Except this isn’t a TV sketch comedy. It’s a movie with millions of dollars in budget and a hard R rating. Whoever is responsible for not taking advantage of that did more to kill this film than any evil monkey ever could have.