Sifting Through Meaninglessness and Grief with ‘The Monkey’

Why does anything happen, really? 

Director Osgood Perkins has certainly wrestled with this question at times, if not all the time, given the untimely passing of his iconic father Anthony Perkins due to AIDS-related complications in 1992 and mother Marisa “Berry” Berenson as a passenger on a flight that was hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001.  

He addressed this awful familial luck or fate or whatever you might call it in a recent interview about his latest film, The Monkey. 

“I’m certainly writing from an autobiographical place, given that I sustained some pretty insane kind of deaths in my life,” Osgood has said. “I think that if I had written this movie when I was 29, it would have been pretty sad. But now that I’m 51, it’s a pretty funny movie.” 

It’s an interesting thought to consider how grief and specifically the evolution of grief over time shapes one’s art. Including such things in criticism can feel all too “writery,” if I may allow myself a meta moment, but it’s context that must be considered when breaking down a film like The Monkey or Osgood Perkins’ 2024 hit, Longlegs, a movie that was heavily marketed, critiqued and picked apart by folks searching for meaning that in some cases did not exist. 

It’s hard not to insert Perkins into the conversation because he often inserts himself. The director told People magazine that The Monkey was inspired by his mother shielding him and his brother from his father’s sexuality, saying, “Your mother can protect you from a truth that she thinks is unsavory … And then you just build out a crazy movie around that.”

And this is far from a new phenomenon for Perkins. On Mick Garris’ podcast Post Mortem, Perkins revealed that his 2016 film, I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, reflects his own attempts at connecting with his dead father, known for playing Psycho killer Norman Bates in the classic 1960 film. 

Furthermore, discussing his 2020 film Gretel & Hansel, he explained, “I wanted Gretel to be somewhat older than Hansel, so it didn’t feel like two 12-year-olds, rather a 16-year-old and an 8-year-old. There was more of a feeling like Gretel having to take Hansel around everywhere she goes and how that can impede one’s own evolution — how our attachments and the things that we love can sometimes get in the way of our growth.” 

If one thing’s clear, it’s that Osgood Perkins draws from his own familial experiences, including and perhaps especially the untimely deaths of his two parents. 

Circling back to The Monkey, the plot of the film deals with two twin brothers, Hal and Bill, whose lives are turned upside down by a cursed toy monkey that causes random horrific deaths. The film is based on a Stephen King short story by the same name, but instead of banging on a drum, King’s monkey employs cymbals. Fun trivia: That little detail had to be changed because Disney apparently owns the rights to the cymbal-banging monkey as it appeared in Toy Story 3. 

Including the Stephen King of it all, it’s hard not to think of this film in the relation of the aforementioned Mick Garris, who himself has adapted a handful of King adaptations, including Sleepwalkers, The Stand, Desperation and Riding the Bullet. Rights to The Monkey were previously held by Frank Darabont, known for his own Stephen King adaptations (The Mist, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile). 

It’s hard not to think of The Monkey standing on the shoulders of that work, especially in the handling of the humor, absurdity and dialogue — a sense of world-building that feels uniquely King-ian in nature. 

For example, Osgood plays the twins’ uncle who states, “I always liked living a life where you sit down and don’t have to get back up until you want to … also we’re swingers.” Or a scene later in the film where twin Bill, played in a dual role by Theo James, quips, “Everybody dies, and that’s life.” 

What comes to mind viewing those line readings are Stephen King television adaptations like Storm of the Century, with iconic lines like, “What really happened in Roanoke in 1587? And what happened here on Little Tall Island in 1989? We may never know. But I know one thing, Davey, you’re too damn short to play basketball.” 

That might sound like a critique, but I genuinely love it. There’s a way of writing in a King novel that often feels more character-driven than an exercise in verbose writing. It’s about settling into the surroundings, like sinking into an old inherited couch. While reading Stephen King’s 1986 novel It, you might have the realization that no one really talks like this, but it’s best to just roll with it. 

That also brings me to the underlying issue with Osgood Perkins’ work, specifically Longlegs — an issue that’s to no fault of Perkins himself, but manifests in the way that we talk about his films. 

Longlegs exists for me in relation to thriller films like Brian DePalma’s Dressed to Kill or John McTiernan’s Nomads — b-horror/thriller movies that most people skip past on Tubi. Put more succinctly, his work on The Monkey and Longlegs is camp. 

The current “A24-ificiation” of horror (which extends to Neon and possibly Blumhouse) and a proliferation of other elevated horror flicks has me at a strange intersection. On one hand, I’m glad that horror is getting the recognition it has always deserved (looking at you, The Substance). On another hand, the overintellectualization of the genre can feel like putting too many toppings on an already delicious treat. 

With the release of Halloween in 2018 we saw Jamie Lee Curtis speak endlessly about how the movie was actually a deep dive into how we deal with grief. That idea then serves as a marketing tool for more horror films in the years to follow. Can’t it be OK for a movie to be just what it is. Maybe it’s a movie about a guy with a knife who kills babysitters. 

Read more: A Full History of the Halloween Movie Franchise

Maybe The Monkey is truly about a killer toy monkey. Everything isn’t The Godfather, and as a lifelong horror fan it can feel like people are ashamed of the content and instead have to market it in a way that gives them permission to enjoy it on a “richer” level. 

Looking from the inverse angle, that doesn’t negate the emotional context that Stephen King wrote about in his original short story and it for sure doesn’t negate the autobiographical experience Osgood Perkins brings to his interpretation. 

Discussing Inland Empire (2006), which he refused to adulterate by assigning his own meaning to publicly, the late, great David Lynch once said, “A film is sort of like a book, and books get written, and the artist may have passed away, so you can’t go talk to them and say, ‘What did you mean?’ … I believe a film should stand on its own, nothing added, nothing subtracted and you work a long time to make it just so. And it’s a very precious thing, every film.” 

David Lynch is a great example, as his work is often over-mythologized in a way that I find unnecessary; it’s great for what it is and sometimes what it isn’t. 

Stephen King is the same in many respects. There may be these threads that I can pull apart and overthink but it’s often best to just sit in the setting where he’s placed me. Great art isn’t meant to be perfected. Osgood Perkins is giving us that, and it’ll be interesting to see if he continues to explore those moments of uneasiness at the intersection of gore, camp and auteur filmmaking. 

In a recent Threads post, King wrote of Perkins’ latest effort, “You’ve never seen anything like The Monkey. It’s batshit insane. As someone who has indulged in batshittery from time to time, I say that with admiration.” In this case, I agree. 

The box that houses the titular monkey in the movie has the words “Like Life” inscribed across it, an awkward term that I think perfectly encapsulates the movie — a pastiche of real life, much like much of Stephen King’s writing. 

I’m on board for the full journey and I don’t want to pull at so many loose threads that I deconstruct the whole thing. 

Bill and Hal’s mother, Lois, played by Tatiana Maslany, says, “Everything is an accident, or nothing is an accident. Same thing.” That line delivery stuck with me throughout the film. I too have been wrestling with grief following the recent passing of my 16-year-old dog and best friend, Sprocket. 

Maslany’s line reading had me fighting back tears in the theater until I eventually succumbed. Even two months later, it still feels fresh. 

Following my main method of coping being self-flagellation, I’ve found myself constantly recycling a process of self-blame: What if I did this one thing differently? Would it change any outcomes? 

I’m at least self-aware enough to understand that this is a poor way of working through the darkness, but it’s been my experience. 

I believe Osgood Perkins has wrestled with similar questions, if on a bigger emotional scale, following the loss of both of his parents. We can load up all of the context into the film and it would easily fit, all the boxes would be ticked, but it feels like a reduction of one’s work and interests to just wave it all away and say, “This is this because this happened.”

Making movies, writing books or creating any art is a lot like that monkey and his drum. It doesn’t always make sense what strikes a chord with the culture, and that doesn’t mean things are any better or worse in the end. The monkey strikes his drum and chooses. 

The Monkey is currently playing at Independent Picture House and Ayrsley Grand Cinema. Support Charlotte’s independent cinemas.