Perkins captures King’s premise in a rather clumsy manner
In the first part of Stephen King’s short story “The Monkey”, Hal Shelburn is terrified that his sons’ lives are in danger. Only Hal knows the consequences of turning a key on a toy monkey’s back: it brings forth death. Only he knows that when he winds the monkey, a death will occur. Together with his parental love for Petey, this serves as a chilling reminder of ominous scenarios playing out.
Perkins makes bold remarks about the inevitability of death in his adaptation, though the original message in the book is far more elegantly woven throughout the plot. In King’s novel, Hal (Christian Convery) is the central figure, although his family gets expanded focus in the movie – his twin brother seems to enjoy terrorizing Hal.
While sorting through antique collectibles left to them by their estranged father, the twins stumble upon a unique antique monkey. They soon understand that this isn’t a simple toy. Just like in King’s 1980 story, the object can kill someone nearby when you turn its key. Curtis Perkins has turned the absurd nature and bloodshed of those deaths into something else entirely grotesque.
Hal, who is now an estranged father to his son, is played by Theo James. Though he got rid of the cursed monkey as a child, it is something that has burdened him for years. After becoming a father, his fears of the monkey grew greater, preventing him from building a close relationship with Petey, played by Colin O’Brien.
There are attempts here to create a father-son reconciliation arc. Perkins makes use of King’s story, amplifying Hal’s fear of being complicit in Petey’s demise. Throughout the film, he learns that fatherhood means having to care deeply for his son while already envisioning scenarios where he would lose him.
That would be the basis for a gripping, transcendent story, but The Monkey makes several missteps that prevent it from reaching its emotional climax. First, it does not introduce Petey until much later and then tries to force the father-son dynamic to be the central focal point of the film. On top of that, Hal and Bill are portrayed in such a bland manner during the movie’s opening scenes that it is almost impossible to care about anything that happens to them or the people around them.
If I don’t have any reservations, The Monkey is, for me, a tensionless movie; not that Perkins does much to create any suspense in the first place. While the film contains some admittedly wrenching and gory deaths, most of the killings seem to float aimlessly throughout the movie’s runtime, not utilizing the terror that any character could, at any moment, die. And that’s the theme of the movie. Perkins clobbers us over the head with this message plenty, having his characters do it multiple times and even showing us death personified.
Maybe it’s not that deep; instead, a mixture of a lighthearted comedy and a horror film. For that, I would first argue that The Monkey is not as funny as it believes it is. But more importantly, the zaniness seems to purposely conceal the shoddy writing of this poorly executed, badly thought-out horror adaptation.
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