Ah, Osgood Perkins – as a modern horror maestro, he is clearly not monkeying around…or, maybe, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Still riding on the success of Longlegs, which came out less than a year ago, Perkins’ brand new trip, The Monkey, is already in theaters, banging its Satanic drums into audience’s hearts.
A much sillier joint than Longlegs, The Monkey is produced by The Conjuring and Malignant creator James Wan, and based on the short story by legend Stephen King from his collection Skeleton Crew. The film follows twin brothers Bill and Hall Shelburn (both played by Theo James), who discover a wind-up toy monkey left behind by their absent Father (Adam Scott). Unfortunately for them, the monkey has a mind of its own, and every time it is wound up and plays its drums, someone dies inexplicably…and in the most brutal ways possible.
The Shelburns attempt to dispose of the monkey, dropping it in a well, but twenty-five years later, it returns to pave a new path of blood and guts. The Monkey is filled to the brim with ridiculously exaggerated death scenes. Like a cartoon Final Destination franchise, the deaths feel like Looney Toons from Hell, each kill building upon the next. But how do these inventive, blood-drenched deaths rank up against each other?
The Five Craziest, Most Creative Deaths in The Monkey
Major Spoilers Ahead!
Image Via Neon
5. Free Real Estate
Around the film’s midpoint or so, morbidly goofy real estate agent Barbara (Tess Degenstein) is showing Hal Shelburn his Aunt Ida’s house, cleared out after her death, which we will get into later. What is so great about this kill scene is how suspenseful the build-up is. As Barbara shows him the house, the audience is given the sense that the monkey could be hiding in any place. Finally, after some build-up, the monkey’s terrifying jingle echoes from somewhere in the town, and Hal senses it. Before he can explain, Barbara opens up one final closet, and a shotgun falls, fires, and blows her to pieces. It is a bloody shock, and Hal taking her finger out of his mouth makes this shockingly well-edited sequence all the more disgusting.
4. Wheels on the Bus
In the movie’s final moments, the monkey has taken out most of the small Maine town in a rapid succession of drum beats. As Hal drives off with his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien), a school bus of celebrating cheerleaders stops mid-intersection, pom-poms and heads sticking out the windows-seemingly cheering for nothing. In the final shot of the film, an oncoming truck zooms by and decapitates or dismembers all of them, blood streaked on the road. It is a ridiculously comedic death, over-the-top in brutal execution, and a perfect way to end an equally tongue-in-cheek, blood-drenched romp.
Image Via Neon
3. Three Act Kill
Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy) truly did not deserve her fate…but as the film says, “everybody dies”, so they might as well go out in the most ludicrous way possible. With the monkey’s return after over two decades, its first victim would be a member of the Shelburn family it did not claim in the ’90s. As Aunt Ida, paranoid in her old age, hears the signature jingle, she looks in the basement only to crash through aging wooden steps and scar her face in a box of fishing tackle. She survives, but only to be lured by the sound of her kitchen stove, only to have her head lit on fire. Once again, she manages to survive, but runs outside, and falls downward on the slope of the lawn, head stabbed through with the wooden end of a real estate sign. It is a convoluted kill, one truly functioning like a well-oiled machine, and one seemingly quite influenced by Final Destination.
2. Horsing Around
While the actual dying is only briefly cut to, Uncle Chip (cameoed by Perkins himself) is given one of the most vomit-inducing aftermaths. As narrated by Bill, Chip is caught in a hunting death, trampled by over sixty wild horses while in a sleeping bag. It mostly plays as comedy, but the film treats its viewers to an elongated shot of coroners pouring out the contents of the bag, and we are forced to sit through them scooping piles of mush that were once Chip out of the bag. With some disgusting practical effects, it is an absolutely sickening couple of seconds.
1. The Nest
It is difficult to pick the “best” kill in a film defined by its phenomenal kill sequences. Still, the grossest kill, most creative kill, and, honestly, the genuinely scariest scene in the movie would have to be Ricky’s (Rohan Campbell) unfortunate death scene. In the back seat of Hal’s car, holding him at gunpoint, he accidentally fires through the window of the car, and through a huge wasp’s nest. Just as Petey winds the monkey inside Bill’s lair, the wasps shoot out in an arrow, filtering into the car and shooting into Ricky’s mouth. Hal escapes, but the audience is left to witness the wasps, controlling Ricky from the inside as he twitches, the bugs beginning to make his body into a nest. His jaw quickly decomposes, the insects tearing his face apart into a hive. It is a never-before-seen type of death from the movie, and certainly leaves the greatest lasting effect on the viewer after the credits roll
Overall, Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey is not to be missed. If you have not seen it, and feel like you can stomach the amount of explosions, decapitations, and dismemberments caught on camera, it has just been released in theaters. With more news of Perkins’ next film, Keeper, dropping each day, one can only imagine what a horror Director with such subgenre versatility will deliver next.