Not that it’s actually a chore. It is a movie worth talking about.

I kind of hate going this personal, but I think this is important context: Perkins’ parents did not die peacefully. His father, Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame, was a closeted gay man, who died of AIDS in 1992, the year Oz turned 18. His mother died in the 9/11 attacks as a passenger in one of the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Perkins was 27.

In the movie, we have two twin brothers. Their father has left them (actually, he died, but the kids don’t know it) and they are convinced their toy monkey (don’t call it a toy, though) killed their babysitter, their mother and their stepfather. So, they try to get rid of it, but turns out that it can’t be done. So, they become social outcasts as adults, preferring not to build relationships to anyone.

When their babysitter dies, their mother gives the brothers this speech about death, it’s randomness and it’s inevitability (“Everybody dies. Some of us peacefully and in our sleep, and some of us… horribly. And that’s life”). After the speech, they go out just dance, which Hal, the brother we mostly follow, states in the narration that this is his happiest memory from his childhood. There’s also the scene where his father dies. The narration is there again, but this time he talks about how father’s always leave something for their kids. I couldn’t find the exact quote, but it feels like he is talking about intergenerational trauma, which is what the movie is largely about.

That being said, the movie is funny. It goes all out to make the deaths absurds and weird and unlikely, like the monkey is just having fun in this way. I fully understand this. So much of comedy is about dealing with pain. Perkins is just doing it here more openly.

This is very different from his previous filmography (which I did talk about here after the release of Longlegs). The tone in those was always dark and deliberate. He would build an atmosphere and milk it to an extent that would put off so many people with limited attention spans.

The Monkey is gory, bloody, moves fast and just has fun with it all. Sometimes it gives you hints about what will happen (a bit like Chekhov’s guns), at other times it’s very surprising. It isn’t exactly surprising that the only trailer before the movie was for the new Final Destination movie.

I like the performances as well. Theo James plays both twins as adults. Hal is this very despondent person, who longs for something, but also understands that he needs to be careful not to risk anyone around him, so he has built walls around himself. Bill, the other twin, has disappeared from Hal’s life for over a decade, but remains the same condesending asshole he was as a kid.

The other adults, even beside their mother, are weirdly forthright with the kids .Perkins himself plays their stepdad, but he isn’t around for very long before he dies in a particularly gruesome way. When we first meet him, he tells Hal that he and his wife will try their best to be good parents, but that he can’t guarantee that their best will be that good. He is also regretful about having to leave behind their swinger lifestyle for the kids.

There is never any explanation on the monkey. It just is. We know that their father bought it from somewhere from his journeys (possibly Paris), but that’s it. It is magical, but it’s real nature is never revealed and I hope they never will, as they do leave the door open for a sequel and the nature of sequels so often is that they need to explain the lore, which doesn’t usually actually make anything better.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this for people who are looking to find something in reminiscent of Perkins’ earlier work, but I would recommend this to anyone interested in horror comedy of the goriest kind.

Finally, we also learn that Death follows traffic rules. Good to know.