"The Monkey" Review

 Hot on the heels of last year's cult horror fave Longlegs (unreviewed, 5/10 score), writer-director Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins) is back with The Monkey, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story from his Skeleton Crew anthology about a cursed toy monkey that wreaks mayhem.

The tone is set immediately as an airline pilot played by Adam Scott (Severance) rushes into a pawn shop covered in blood seeking to get rid of a large toy monkey which bangs a drum triggering bad consequences as illustrated by the shop owner being killed by weird sequence of events. The pilot then disappears from his family's life.

 Left behind are his wife Lois (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black) and their twin sons, Hal and Bill (both played by Christian Convery, Sweet Tooth). Bill is three minutes older, so uses that to mercilessly bully Hal. They find the monkey in a box of their father's stuff and after turning the key, resulting in their babysitter being killed in a freak Japanese hibachi restaurant accident, Hal attempts to use it kill Bill, but instead his mother dies of an aneurysm. He dismembers the monkey and throws it away, but it reappears at the home of the aunt and uncle the twins were sent to. Bill tries to use the monkey to kill Hal, but their uncle dies. They then agree to throw it down a well where it can't harm anyone again.

25 years later, Hal (now played by Theo James, Divergent) is working as a store clerk and is estranged from Bill and his son, Petey (Colin O'Brien, Wonka), whom he only sees once a year to keep safe from the Monkey returning. During his annual visit, his ex-wife tells him her new husband, Ted (Elijah Wood, Sin City), plans on adopting Petey, cutting him completely from Hal's life.

When their aunt dies in a bizarre Final Destination-worthy manner, Bill reaches out to Hal and tells him that he needs to go to her house and check whether the Monkey has returned. The realtor tells Hal that there have been a rash of mysteriously weird deaths every day for the past week. That's right, someone's got the Monkey and is turning the key!

If you're a fan of over-the-top dark comedy-horror in the vein of Evil Dead II and it's sequels, then The Monkey is for you. The kills are so ridiculous that they prompt laughs more than ewwwws, but like Evil Dead movies/shows, not Terrifier movies. Final Destination kills are also a valid comparison.

I didn't really care for James' performance as the twins, but Convery is so good and the difference in appearance was enough that we were genuinely surprised it was one actor. (It probably helped that the Queen of Multiple Roles, Maslany, was his counterpart.)

Though a manageable 98-minutes long, the pacing does slack off noticeably in the last act as Perkins drags things out; trimming 15-20 minutes would've helped. This is a common issue with Perkins as his  Gretel & Hansel (5/10) was also empty and slow despite being visually sumptuous. He needs a co-writer and an editor to break out of his 5-6/10 rut.

 Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.