Fear Of Chimps

Osgood Perkins' THE MONKEY is just the latest inciter in my lifelong phobia of simians

When I was four years old, the world was full of things that scared me. The shadow of a tree branch cast into my bedroom at night was a ghoul’s hand, reaching through the curtains and grasping toward my soul. The stubby trunk of a shorn bush was a devil’s horn sticking up from the ground. Every thunderstorm was the promise of apocalypse. In 1988, though, the number one thing that sent shivers down my spine was the VHS cover of George A. Romero’s MONKEY SHINES.

My parents love to tell the story of how, one night, my aunt brought over MONKEY SHINES to watch with my family. Upon seeing the movie’s VHS cover, I went ballistic, demanding that my aunt immediately leave and take the movie with her. To this day, I still have not actually seen MONKEY SHINES. I mean, look at that VHS cover! Can you blame me?

Truthfully, I don’t as much fear monkeys as I have a healthy respect for them. The PLANET OF THE APES movies are not escapist fun - they are a warning of what apes and primates can do if given a horse and a gun. When visiting the zoo, I pay passing respect to the monkey section before quickly jetting off to see something cuddlier and friendlier, like bears or lions. I don’t want our future simian overlords to associate my face with their years spent in captivity.

Osgood Perkins’ latest film, THE MONKEY, was released in theaters last week. Perkins is a filmmaker for whom I also have a healthy respect. The BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER gave me genuine chills when I watched it at Fantastic Fest in 2014. The film is about a young woman haunted by a supernatural presence during a wintery stay at a boarding school. Perkins fills every ounce of the movie with genuine dread and terror. You can feel the palpable pressure of the movie’s dark presence in every frame, like a comfort blanket sewn from nightmares. LONGLEGS, Perkins’ breakthrough film, stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent hunting an elusive serial killer played by Nic Cage. The movie also marinates in haunting images - Perkins filled many frames with barely perceptible images of the devil to give it a feeling of ununderstandable unease. That said, I found LONGLEGS to be tonally unmored. The film bounced back and forth between camp and gravitas, and I was frequently unable to keep up with the tonal whiplash.

THE MONKEY, I’m happy to say, was everything I was hoping for from the movie and more. Perkins teamed up with horror producer extraordinaire James Wan to adapt a short story from Stephen King. With that pedigree, my expectations were pretty sky high, soaring even higher due to releasing studio Neon’s inventive marking.

At the center of THE MONKEY is the titular ape - a wind-up toy that, when activated, beats its little drum and sets into motion a Rube Goldberg series of misfortunes that will lead to the horrific death of somebody nearby. Theo James stars as a pair of twin brothers who tried to destroy the monkey when they were kids, only to wind up dealing with a healthy dose of trauma for the rest of their lives. Like the FINAL DESTINATION films, though, the movie's real stars are the gloriously gory death scenes. Perkins has firmly parked his car in camp corner for THE MONKEY, embracing a series of wild and over-the-top deaths for those unlucky enough to be chosen by the film’s toy monkey. Perkins builds upon his silly (yet gruesome) set pieces with tongue-in-cheek dialogue, questionable wardrobe choices (Elijah Wood, in a cameo, wears a too-tight shirt that seems designed only to showcase the actor’s nipples), and wonderfully pulpy dialogue. THE MONKEY is a movie that feels like an edge lord GOOSEBUMPS book and a hard-boiled slice of fiction you’d read in a weird horror anthology paperback picked up from a thrift store. In other words, it’s the perfect tonal adaption of King’s story, a piece of fiction whose origins are in the pages of PLAYBOY magazine.

Perkins’ put so much of himself in his fiction. His father was the legendary actor Anthony Perkins, and Osgood has talked in the past about how his dad’s closeted gay lifestyle has informed the use of secrets and deception in many of Perkins’ movies. With THE MONKEY, though, Osgood Perkins seems to be exploring his relationship with the death of his mother, Berry Berenson. Berenson died during the hijacking of a plane on September 11, 2001. Perkins, who at a young age already had to see his father die of AIDs, had to witness his mom’s death in one of history’s most senseless acts of random violence. This kind of familiar trauma is sure to give somebody a unique view of death, and with THE MONKEY, Perkins makes a meal out of the chaotic and uncontrollable nature of death.

I loved THE MONKEY. It’s gory, funny, smart, and not afraid to be a little stupid. It’s a movie about generational trauma that also isn’t afraid to give audiences a close-up of a sleeping bag full of human scrapple. Sometimes we want high and low brow, at the same time. The movie is Perkins’ finest achievement to date, in my opinion, and I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

Just, you know, hopefully with fewer monkeys.