Wind up a sinister toy primate and someone dies. That rule ought to be simple and streamlined enough to follow, but in Osgood Perkins' The Monkey, it makes for a scattershot narrative conceit, swinging quickly from humorous, Rube Goldberg-ian kills, to some kind of spiritual possession, to unfortunate medical emergencies — all with no explanation. This is, on the surface, "like life" — the phrase branded on the old-fashioned hatbox in which the cursed trinket is discovered — but the film's ruminations on mortality and remorse are restrained by a tonally haphazard approach, laced with an irony that's neither funny nor bitter enough to make a lasting impact.
As a piece in and of itself, The Monkey is a hobbling attempt at a roller coaster ride that never finds the right rhythm, either in its peaks and valleys, or its twists and turns. As a follow-up to Perkins' Longlegs — a film that, for all its flaws, contains an atmospheric dread — it's a bizarre effort that makes the former feel like a fluke. Where Perkins' serial killer predecessor had a claustrophobic sensibility, The Monkey features little in the way of visual or thematic cohesion, and is bound mostly by errant snark à la Deadpool, which clashes wildly with its numerous hints towards poignancy around parenthood and death.
