Main cast: Theo James (Hal Shelburn, Bill Shelburn), Tatiana Maslany (Lois Shelburn), Christian Convery (Young Hal Shelburn, Young Bill Shelburn), Colin O’Brien (Petey Shelburn), Rohan Campbell (Ricky), Sarah Levy (Ida Zimmer), Adam Scott (Captain Petey Shelburn), and Elijah Wood (Ted Hammerman)
Director: Osgood Perkins
Theo James’s greatest contribution to modern cinema is his bare arse. Well, it could be a body double’s bare arse, given how things work in Hollywood, but still, it’s a nice arse. I wish the rest of him can be praised in such a glowing manner, as the guy is as forgettable as can be.
Sure, he looks good, but that’s the bare minimum to get into the movies, and it’s a generic, forgettable kind of cuteness, so yeah, Theo Who, more like.
Still, imagine my surprise when he shows up playing twin brothers in Osgood Perkins’s flick The Monkey. Here, he plays the grown-up version of the nicer Hal Shelburn and meaner twin Bill, and even when Bill is supposed to be some kind of scene stealer, I don’t remember him much. Maybe if he had taken his pants off, I guess, but still, the pants stayed on so I’d probably forget he is ever in this movie a few weeks from now.
I do remember the kid that plays the younger versions of the twin brothers, which should say something about how bland an actor a fully clothed Theo James is.
Anyway, unlike Mr Perkins’s previous effort, this one attempts to be more of a dark comedy. It’s about two twin brothers that have been plagued by a wind-up toy monkey that, when played, causes apparently random deaths to the people around them.
The first half of the movie is about the two brothers as kids, and the second half sees Hal trying to stop Bill from using the monkey to settle some personal issues between them and causing everyone else to die around them in the process.
Oh, and Hal has a kid, because what’s a horror film without some tyke being in existential danger to get people emotionally hooked.
This movie has one big problem: it wants to be wacky and zany, but it actually isn’t.
The film is full of wacky characters and wackier situations, but the wackiness ends up making it hard to see the film as horror, while at the same time it’s not fully committed to be balls to the walls crazy. As a result, it ends up being neither hilarious or scary, just somewhere in the middle — acceptable but at the same time, kind of mid and forgettable, like the lead actor.
The kills can be entertaining, but still, it’s more watered-down wacky Final Destination than anything else.
Then again, the guys behind me in the theater are snorting and laughing throughout the entire movie, so who knows, comedy is indeed subjective and people with lesser different tastes when it comes to these things may have a better time than me.
Mind you, it’s not that I had a bad time, I’m just mostly indifferent throughout. Still, for a movie adaptation of a Stephen King work, at least it doesn’t embarrass itself too much, for what that is worth.
