THE MONKEY

Osgood Perkins has done it again, he is back this time with The Monkey and I didn't look up that much information about The Monkey beforehand just because I wanted to have an open mind as much as possible. The movie starts with a flashback and an explanation of how this all started about 25 years ago. The protagonist's father, creating this generational curse in my opinion is to be passed down from generation to generation. The two twin boys get a hand of the monkey, and you know how young boys are. Very immature and silly, the one twin named Hal gets so upset with his older brother Bill who keeps picking on him and starting fights with him, sibling stuff. He gets unhappy and turns the monkey wishing that it will kill Bill but instead, it kills their mother. Bill witnesses this and it causes so much trauma and worry which I can't imagine because they're like 11 or 12 years old when they're witnessing everyone around them die in the most horrific ways imaginable. It's insane! They are having eerie occurrences with the monkey in which you don't know who is going to die it's very random and it gives me similarities with the show 1000 Ways to Die because of how crazy unexpected and dramatic these deaths are.

While watching I can't help but think oh wait I've never thought about dying that way and now this is planted in my mind forever and I am never going to think of this the same. Fast forward to about 20 years later in the film, Hal and Bill are all grown up and estranged, and Hal thinks he left the family trouble behind with the monkey, until one day their aunt mysteriously dies, Bill calls Hal saying he knows it all because of the monkey, Hal at first denies it and is also hesitant to even listen to anything Bill says because of how estranged they are and how much of a dickhead Bill always has been. I get Hals's reasoning for staying away. But when Hal realizes the monkey is not buried he knows its back and he needs to try to get this under control quickly. Now realizing he needs to fix this problem, he's also having a trip with his distant son who he barely sees or speaks to. I like that Perkins added that storyline in the movie because to me it feels more real do you have a complicated father-son duo instead of the close-knit family ties. It's like battling two things at once about getting rid of the monkey but also figuring out how to make my relationship better with my son and it's hard because Petey (the son) is in the middle of a school project about his family tree and he's asking his dad about his mom, if his dad has any siblings, Hal responds with no he doesn’t have any siblings, so really Hal is starting their relationship off by still lying or covering up his family past. Petey is aware of it, he calls Hal out about it and is vividly upset about his lying father. But Hal doesn't see it as lying, he sees it as protecting him from his generational curse. That's what he was doing all this time and it just comes off poorly, though he means well it's just hard for a kid to understand that. Every time in this film where you think it is a serious scene with a serious conversation, Perkins completely spins it into the most comical horror spin you can think of and it's incredibly done. This film is one of the perfect mixes of both horror and comedy.