Osgood Perkins, director of this year’s horror phenomenon Longlegs, has commented on his upcoming Steven King adaptation, The Monkey. In an interview with Empire, he said, “It’s a redemptive, soulful comedy about the fact that everybody dies in the world. If John Landis and Chuck Jones had a baby, you’d have this. It’s really sweet, sad, funny, shocking, gory, violent, ridiculous, cartoonish, poignant. I love it… Really unfortunate things happen to people, out of nowhere… I felt like there should be a Looney Tunes, Itchy & Scratchy, ‘Is there really that much blood in a human being?’ level… I’m doing a bit of a trust-fall into the audience’s arms. I’m trusting that an audience wants to see a filmmaker that they like, doing what they want to do, as long as you’re doing it well.”
Perkins appears to want to create something a bit different from his previous venture in Longlegs but thinks that audiences will decide to bite anyway and hear him out with this different take on a horror film. Leaning more in the black comedy direction than traditional horror, The Monkey will jump far past the line of absurdity, showcasing just how many terrible ways there are to die.
The short story of the same name, written by Stephen King, follows twin brothers Bill and Hal when they reunite and find out their old monkey toy has triggered a string of increasingly brutal deaths. The film stars Theo John (Divergent, Castlevania), Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk, Orphan Black), and Elijah Wood. The Monkey is being distributed once again by Neon and will be hitting theaters February 21, 2025.
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