When twin brothers Bill and Hal find their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths start. The siblings decide to throw the toy away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years.

Hot on the heels of ‘Longlegs’ comes another horror movie from Osgood Perkins, this one based on a Stephen King novella (how has his repertoire not been exhausted by now?!). It’s quite a simple premise – there’s an evil toy monkey (sorry, not a toy) that kills people, and the unfortunate twin brothers who have found it in their possession have never been able to fully get rid of it. If you like seeing inventive, gory death sequences, and enjoy your horror spliced with a good dose of comedy, then ‘The Monkey’ will be right up your street, but I do stress that is pretty much all this is going to deliver.

The movie begins 25 years ago in a suburban home where two young twin brothers Hal & Bill (both played by Christian Convery) stay with their mother (Tatiana Maslany), after their father (Adam Scott) had ran off leaving them. One day, they discover a creepy looking drum playing monkey amongst their father’s belongings, and it doesn’t take long before they realise that this is no ordinary toy monkey, with it taking several deaths before they attempt to get rid of the monkey for good. Back in the present, we rejoin Hal (Theo James) who has never got over his experiences with the monkey as a child and now lives a quiet, restrained life where he seems to try to do all he can to avoid spending time with his son (Colin O’Brien).

If you’re expecting ‘The Monkey’ to provide a commentary on parenthood or grief then you won’t really get that, as Perkins main focus is clearly on delivering gory, macabre insane fun, and to be fair, it does deliver what it sets out to do. Perkins is a skilled director and he finds a good balance between absurd humour and psychological dread, but I found it only mildly diverting and wasn’t as entertained as I hoped to be. That said, it’s probably not a genre that I love as much as some others do, and it does seem to have been very well liked elsewhere.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Osgood Perkins

Starring: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott and Elijah Wood

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714946/