THE MONKEY. My close reading of Stephen King — now three quarters of a lifetime ago, was defined by morbid curiosity — a fascination with the seemingly endless, dark wellspring of the author’s imagination. The books were scary, sure, but they were also compelling for their weirdness and perversity and examination of Evil as an ill-defined but omnipresent force in the world. As I’ve aged — and read less and less King — I have retained my admiration for the sheer volume of his productivity, his ability to generate and follow through on ideas and, perhaps most of all, his creation of a body of work that remains both accessible and relevant to generations of readers.
As we’ve entered a new golden age of adapting the man’s work, though, I’ve realized most of the movies and shows based on King’s work insist on hewing to the sense of dread and horror that was so intoxicating and frightening to us as young readers. Mike Flanagan has become one of King’s foremost interpreters, for one example, and I found both his Gerald’s Game (2017) and Doctor Sleep (2019), while technically accomplished, to be almost joyless in their fealty. Likewise, The Outsider (2020), a mostly excellent limited series from 2020 that we only recently caught up with: The dread is palpable, and the atmosphere freighted with it, but does it leave any room to let in the light and air?
There may be something in all of this to do with King’s famously vitriolic response to Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining (1980), which amplifies the scariness but also folds in more morbid humor and subtle sexual weirdness. Granted, it was one of the first midnight movies I ever saw and thus has likely become disproportionately canonical, but I’ve since read the novel, and I would vouchsafe that Kubrick’s work is the better one. (I only watched part of King’s self-directed TV version, but I was not convinced).
Point being, transitioning a written work to the screen can (and should) enable the new author to take some liberties, to show us something we may not have seen in the source material, or to take us down a thematic pathway suggested as much by their imagination as by the work itself.
Enter Osgood Perkins, hopefully still feeling chuffed about the very recent success of Longlegs (2024), with something completely different. Based on a King short story, The Monkey is about a toy organ grinder monkey that is both harbinger and bringer of death. (Like so many of King’s story ideas, this one is vivid but perhaps underdeveloped). We experience this doling out of terrible misfortune primarily through the character Hal Shelburn (played in youth by Christian Convery and adulthood by Theo James), the long-suffering “younger” twin of brother Bill. Having experienced more of the monkey’s brand of twisted justice, Hal has retreated into near-isolation, maintaining no friendships and insisting that he only be granted visitation of his son one week per year. But evil toy monkeys being what they are, he’s soon drawn into a maelstrom of death and destruction.
With Longlegs, Perkins concocted a moody, atmospheric murder mystery accented by glam rock and neurodivergence. It’s weird and freaky, but, strangely enough, something of a model of restraint. Especially when set against The Monkey, which draws liberally on ’70s arthouse horror, ’80s slashers and an appreciation of practical visual effects, in equal measure. (It plays a little like a Final Destination as imagined by the Zucker brothers.) Careening from one over-the-top kill to another, drenched in arterial spray and dripping viscera, the movie balances reverence for the source material with an undeniable sense of fun and weirdness, all the while executing this vision with deadly-serious attention to craft and detail.
As beautifully staged and photographed as Longlegs is, its created reality feels very much like a part of our world, with its antagonist a heightened presence within a recognizable landscape. Perkins and his creative team bring the same level of care and detail to The Monkey, but here their efforts are toward the invention of a strange, almost absurdist world wherein Hal can only attempt to adapt, rather than create meaningful change. The result is a tidily self-contained horror comedy and a piece of work that will likely disappoint those looking for another misty King hankie-twister.
What Perkins has done here is, to me, the truest sort of adaptation: summoning on screen what the written work made him see in his own twisted, creative mind. This is less a literal translation than an expansion or extrapolation, the story a jumping-off point rather than an infallible tract. And for me, it works like gangbusters. Bloody and funny, as cheeky as it is grotesque, this makes me all the more anxious to see what Perkins does next. R. 98M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
NOW PLAYING
BECOMING LED ZEPPLIN. Documentary on the origins of the iconic rock band. PG13. 137M. BROADWAY.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD. Anthony Mackie wields the shield as the new president (Harrison Ford) hulks out. At least it’s not Nazis! PG13. 118M. BROADWAY (3D), MILL CREEK (3D), MINOR.
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For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in ‘Breathing Room’.