The Monkey

I've written a few times about what makes for a good dark comedy. But while dark comedy operates on a different wavelength than your standard comedy, one thing that applies to all forms of comedy is that the humor needs to be sold by the actors. Think of Leslie Nielsen in Airplane delivering with the dryness of the Sahara "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley", or everybody but John Belushi paralyzed with shock and fright in Animal House after he destroys the guitar. All humor needs someone or something to put a stamp on the joke. At the start, it seems like Osgood Perkins' The Monkey will accomplish that through deadpan reactions to absurd situations. When the shopkeeper gets harpooned through the abdomen, and Adam Scott's reaction to it retracting and pulling the intestines with it is blank surprise, it seems like the movie is going for an ever-escalating mountain of absurdity, and nobody in the world being able to process it. The problem, however, soon reveals itself; that's the only card in The Monkey's deck. It is a joke that is repeated again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, all the way to the end credits. It is not interested in exploring the idea of generational trauma that it only briefly touches on and drops like a hot potato. The central conflict between the brothers is resolved with two sentences. Nobody reacts to anything with anything resembling actual human emotion, especially when it is something horrific. The movie has as many tricks as its titular toy; it kills someone in an outlandish way, protagonist deadpans, next scene. If the protagonist at least showed some progression -- getting more and more irritated or disgusted or any damned emotion whatsoever -- then it might have some legs. But no, The Monkey just bangs the same drum in the same way and expects to keep getting positive results. Nope, sorry, that's not how this works. As a gore-hound, it also doesn't help that most of the kills are preposterous even for a horror movie (an electrified pool causes a woman diving into it to explode on contact, and a shotgun blast literally vaporizes another woman), and almost every one of them is bargain-basement CGI. Say what you will about how high definition has hurt the practical effects of the pre-CGI era, but it's still impressive to see Freddy Krueger lean out of the wall in A Nightmare On Elm Street, or the creature design in Tremors. The Monkey buries the viewer in a deluge of computer-generated viscera that feels as natural as Bugs Bunny. A 13-year-old boy might not care, but when this movie is trying to pretend it has something to say about familial bonds and trauma and attempt to have a sightline on a story, it makes the litany of kills seem unnecessary. Worse, they feel like a distraction from what the movie should be doing. It feels like a Rian Johnson "subversion", but in reverse; instead of denying the viewer what feels right out of spite, The Monkey triples down on its weakest aspect in an attempt to distract the viewer from the movie being as empty and hollow as a dollar store greeting card. I came into this knowing it has a very polarized response. I was hoping that I'd be among those that found the positive in its off-kilter sense of humor and randomness. Instead, I got the same joke I saw before the opening credits yelled at me for another 90 minutes, punctuated by emotionless acting and PS2-era graphics on a string of needless and tiresome kills. I've now seen two Osgood Perkins movie, and he fumbled on both of them. I don't think I'm inclined to give him a third try.