The Monkey (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Mike Flanagan is in the news again for making more Stephen King film adaptations but it's Oz Perkins who helmed The Monkey. Based on King's 1980 short story of the same name, the plot concerns a cursed toy monkey that causes somewhat random brutal deaths. That's it. Simple, straightforward, easy. No demonic entity or possessive spirit of a serial killer, no flawed AI taking over, no expansive mythmaking or origin lore. Just death, meted out by the kind of nightmarish plaything that is sure to make you ask, "Who would actually play with this, and how?"

Perkins, who came into the spotlight last year for Longlegs, is much more impressive a filmmaker when social media conversation isn't hyperbolically lauding his as "the scariest movie of the year" and such drivel. I'll maintain that The Blackcoat's Daughter is much more terrifying than anything Nic Cage eked out from his mime makeup, fun as that was to see. His Gretel & Hansel and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House are masterclasses in Gothic atmosphere and detached storytelling. But the serial killer weirdness in Longlegs implied a turn in Perkins's aesthetic, and The Monkey certainly leans into a gonzo style we haven't seen from him yet. In his case, bigger spectacle isn't camp, which has been growing in popularity (though often misunderstood and mislabeled); it's just horror, a frank look at the absolute mess death often brings with it.

That's not to say it's a morose affair. This macabre experiment in tone indeed features several moments designed to elicit aloud cries of joy and surprise. Think Final Destination, but without the obsession those characters have with outsmarting or escaping death; those feature a certain hope and agency that Perkins's film pointedly does not share. The Monkey will "getcha," and it's going to be gross and strange, and there really isn't rhyme or reason to it. Its opening sequence demonstrates this, as a messy (read: bloody) Adam Scott (Krampus, Little Evil) barges into a pawn shop to sell the ape doll and its little drum, looking as grim and horrified as... well, as someone who usually does comedy would in bloody clothes at night while lugging around a cursed toy that could cause his death at any moment. Perkins has been a confident filmmaker from his start, but a film this popularly oriented could have slipped from his grip; not so, and it's in scenes like this that he reminds us of his absolute control over complex and heightened tone.

Time jumps ahead, and the story proper concerns twin brothers, Hal and Bill, who discover dad's toy monkey (despite our having seen him destroy it) and activate it. It was in a closet with his remaining stuff, dear old daddy having absconded mysteriously after that prologue scene. First it's their babysitter who bites it -- almost literally -- and then the boys realize every time they twist the monkey's wind-up key, someone near them dies. By the time it takes their weary mother (Tatiana Maslany) from them, the boys drop it down a well and soon become estranged. We jump again twenty-five years into the future, and, as any King fan will tell you, the twins' hidden past returns with a vengeance.

The barrage of death scenes in this film are graphic, to be sure, but they aren't really meant to be taken seriously. It's Grand Guignol for the postmodern crowd. A woman jumps into an electrified pool and explodes. Yet, despite laughter in the screening auditorium I attended, the comedy is notably uncomfortable, as if Perkins is inviting us to laugh and then asking why we did so. There's a tense undercurrent of inevitability as the film implicates the audience in its massacre. We often say that God has a sense of humor when good things happen in roundabout or odd ways; what if Death has a sense of humor, too?

You might wonder why I bring God into a discussion of this amoral, bleak, grotesque exercise in violence and irreverent humor. But the film's ending, which I won't spoil here, suggests that Perkins himself has some biblical ideas in mind regarding the nature of the monkey and its task among humanity, and its inclusion of a specific apocalyptic character is presented in earnest, not in satire. Perhaps he's saying that if Death can laugh at us, we should laugh back at it; a worthy message itself, this gains power when you consider Perkins's personal story as well as King's. We know about his father -- a relationship that still arouses curiosity among fans, especially as daddy issues keep cropping up in Perkins's films -- but a little-known factoid is that Perkins's mother died on the plane that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. As Longlegs was clearly more about Anthony Perkins and The Monkey has more heart for Berry Berenson, I'd be curious to see them billed in a double feature together and would love to hear Perkins give a talkback. That would be a therapy session for the ages!

Perkins, as writer and director, added a lot to King's story, making it his own in the process. Yet it's a lean, mean hour and a half of adrenaline and violence with nary an ounce of unnecessary weight. No matter how interested I might be in the auteur's influence, the point remains that this is a straightforward and accessible film about random death and a cosmic indifference or even cruelty toward human life. Our age of "elevated horror" and films that require dissertations (or shitty YouTube videos) to explain their nuanced intricacies needs films like The Monkey to jump in, shake things up, and leave us wanting more. I hope we don't get it.

Halloween Ends (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

It's all over. Forty years after the original masterpiece, David Gordon Green revealed his revamped vision of what happens to the archetypal Final Girl after a lifetime of dealing with her trauma. And while designing a trilogy isn't groundbreaking these days, his approach to this franchise was certainly different than the onslaught of reboots, remakes, and requels of classic slasher horror that has dominated the genre for the last decade or so. As a planned trilogy, he could plan out exactly his brilliant steps: first, to fashion a Halloween that ensnared fans of the original due to proper character development and a straightforward and highly effective plot, and second, to then push the franchise to the edge of the possible and completely shock everyone with awe (and gore). And then, finally, to end it all. But how? Surely going into this film I wondered if it would be an all-out, balls-out brawl between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. But certainly that isn't sustainable for a feature film, not least because the characters are much older than most horror protagonists. So what to do?

In what I think is a genius turn, here the writers continue their spin outward from Michael. First, we saw his evil firsthand and its impact on one woman and her family in a tightly wound exploration of generational trauma. Then, in Halloween Kills, we got the consummate slasher film about Michael, in which his evil is at its peak and radiates throughout Haddonfield, infecting others and leading them to mob violence and chaos. No doubt partly due to the pandemic, the final installment feels detached. While it would have been nice to have all three taking place on the same night, or even having this one take place on November 1, I'm okay with the bit of a break because it allows the characters to actually demonstrate growth and development. So this film picks up four years later as Laurie and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) are fully settled into their new life together. But instead of just making yet another slasher in which Michael escapes, arrives, hunts, and disappears, here the filmmakers decide to pull the most unexpected and -- crucially -- realistic ending for these characters they possibly could have.

If Michael is pure evil, as several characters in the franchise have exclaimed over the years, then it stands to reason that he cannot die, try as Tommy and his mob did to prove otherwise in the previous film. You can't just have another installment where they fight and maybe finally Laurie figures out a surefire way to kill him. I mean, in some ways, that does indeed happen in Halloween Ends, and their final fight is pretty brutal to watch. But the bulk of this film, by far, is about the nature of evil and how something like Michael happened in the first place. Thankfully, they didn't go back in time and try to create an origin story for him or try to explain his motivations, his methodology, or even his uncanny ability to bounce back from deadly injuries.

Instead, we're introduced to a new character, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), who in the first scene is babysitting on Halloween night in Haddonfield. The year is 2019, a full year after Haddonfield's cozy neighborhood streets ran red with blood, and the town has not recovered. Fears of "the boogeyman" are more gripping than ever, yet the parents Corey is sitting for are unwinding a different way, heading to a party nearby. Corey's charge is a spoiled little brat who wants to watch inappropriately scary movies and play practical jokes; when one goes terribly awry, the kid accidentally falls to his death and Corey is immediately suspected of murder. This simple and chilling opening scene sets up what could be an annoying way to continue the franchise with a new baddie, as many pessimistic viewers will surely roll eyes about, but it works damn well as a reminder that this is kind of how the first one started back in 1978.

I still hate that Laurie's daughter Karen (Judy Greer) got killed off so unceremoniously and violently. I don't really understand how Laurie went from a paranoid survivalist to a thriving suburban house mom (house grandmother, I guess) in only four years during a pandemic and while Michael is clearly still out and about. I don't really understand how Michael survived four years in the sewers without getting caught or leaving or finishing what he started. But these points aside, I found the shifting focus onto Corey to be refreshing and terrifying, not unlike what we've seen in other sympathize-with-the-devil films lately like Joker. A bad thing happened to Corey -- who may or may not be slightly predisposed to some behavioral problems, as early scenes arguably suggest in vague, veiled ways -- and as a result, Haddonfield created a new monster. Michael's slaughter of no fewer than 31 people the previous year made everyone primed to see monsters; now they picked one, and between the hurting, angry parents and the anxious, angry bullies at school, they work in sync to vilify a lone boy who doesn't really fit in and can't quite catch a break.

So when an injured and scared Corey stumbles across the boogeyman in a drainpipe, it's not without some fascination that we see Michael Myers tolerate his presence and even coordinate attacks with him. In a twisted mentorship situation, Michael shows Corey his M.O. and encourages the young man to satisfy his violent urges in cruel and vicious ways. Meanwhile, Corey continues to date Allyson, whose own teenage rebellion lets her finally get to be a bit of a "bad girl" after living in her mother's perfect house and now her grandmother's overwrought attempts at cookie-cutter normalcy. It's not a very believable romance, and the two actors leave quite a bit to be desired, but it's a solid storytelling device.

I found this film, compared with the previous two, to be less focused dramatically but perhaps more focused thematically. I also found its editing and cinematography to be less effective and even occasionally lazy; one wonders if larger portions of this film fell to the cutting room floor during production, or if the writers had too many ideas and didn't prune properly. As a Halloween film, it's not really up to par with the others. But thank goodness for that, because another rote flick in the franchise would have killed it in a bad way. And it does have a badass fight between Jamie Lee Curtis and The Shape, so there's always that lovely inclusion. As a horror thriller about the creation of a new villain, it's really quite wonderful and unexpected. And I think that's the most satisfying way to end the franchise: something fresh and interesting that reinforces the series' concept of evil. It is impossible and unknowable and unpredictable, and most importantly, it is very catching.