“The Monkey” is like a comedy, except 'people die in insane ways': Inside the Stephen King adaptation (exclusive)

When you make a good movie, people want to work with you. It’s a simple truth director Osgood "Oz" Perkins experienced more than once in his career in indie horror, most recently with the Maika Monroe- and Nicolas Cage-fronted Longlegs from earlier this year. "It was proven that my weird material can actually be worth a buck," the filmmaker behind Gretel & Hansel (2020) and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) remarks during an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

That was also the case with The Monkey, Perkins' adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 short story about a cursed toy and the horrors wrought on twin brothers.

Actor Theo James (Netflix's The Gentlemen, HBO's The White Lotus) and Michael Clear, the head of production at James Wan's company Atomic Monster, both separately sought him out because of The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015). James first wanted to explore a TV project: a based-on-a-true-story gothic tale about a witch hunt in Northern England during World War II as "a reflection of human nature surrounded by the crumbling edifice of Britain," the actor says. That particular series never came together, but in another sect of Hollywood, Clear and his fellow producer, Peter Safran, had the rights to The Monkey and a script that wasn't working. Perkins, however, made it work with a pitch that felt left of field even for the folks at Clear's banner, the company behind the Conjuring movies, M3GAN, and Mortal Kombat.

"What if it's a comedy?" Perkins posits. "Here's this monkey that doesn't do anything. It's not M3GAN. It doesn't attack. It's evil just in its existence. Things happen around it for no better reason than they do. Its presence makes people die in insane ways."

Related: Stephen King's The Monkey first-look teaser delivers blood-drenched Theo James

Perkins found a more personal connection when reflecting on his own life story. His father was Psycho star Anthony Perkins, who had relationships with men until undergoing conversion therapy. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992. His mother was photographer Berry Berenson, who died as a passenger on hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001. "I've had people die in truly, deeply insane ways," Perkins continues. "Everybody dies whether there's a monkey or not. What if you could do this with a smile — process the fact that everybody dies? And what an insane, surrealist notion, dude! You will die; we'll all die. That's crazy sh--. To do that as a comedy felt very apropos."

"He wanted to make a family movie, but an R-rated one," James, who recently saw a cut of the film, says. "It's hyper dark, but also it has heart to it, and it's really funny."

As children, played by Christian Convery (Cocaine Bear, Netflix's Sweet Tooth), Hal and Bill live with their mother (Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany). Their father, an airline pilot, went out for the proverbial pack of cigarettes and never returned, as the saying goes. The kids decide to rummage through his old stuff, knickknacks from his international travels. Among the bonsai trees, clogs, boomerangs, and other familial artifacts is a small toy monkey with black, void-like eyes and an unsettling grin. When they use a key to wind it up, "stuff starts happening," Perkins teases. "It goes quite bad for them. They're very directly impacted in terrible ways."

One such bad thing occurs during a dinner at a hibachi grill, a scene inspired by nights at Benihana with the Perkins family. It's a perfect example of the tone the director wanted to strike, that mix of horror and comedy. Perkins references Death Becomes Her and American Werewolf in London. "Without saying what happens, it's ridiculous, and it's funny," he teases of that hibachi sequence. "The kids in the movie sh-- talk all the time. My 15-year-old daughter says f--- every second word. That's just a way of saying that the design of all of it is meant to cause a smile to appear on your face."

The twins try to destroy the monkey, but they can't. They try to contain it but can't do that either. Finally, they manage to dispose of it, and for 25 years, they think they're safe. As adults (now played by James), Bill is estranged from his brother, while Hal refuses to see his own young son most of the year out of fear that the monkey will resurface and harm his family. Of course, the one time Hal schedules a father-son road trip is when the monkey rematerializes, forcing Hal and Bill to reunite to deal with the situation.

Related: The Monkey director calls Stephen King film 'Robert Zemeckis on ecstasy' (exclusive)

James wanted each performance as the brothers to feel as opposing as possible. For Hal, his touchstone was early Tom Hanks. "Someone you endemically trust [who] may make mistakes along the way, but essentially [is] a good person," he explains. Bill, who's older by four minutes, "is hyper volatile from probably birth, verging on sociopathic, and all the illusions of grandeur that come with that."

Put even simpler, "Bill's a prick," Perkins adds. "He's a blowhard and kind of stupid. Hal is gentle, sensitive."

Yellowjackets and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood also appears in The Monkey as Ted Hammerman, who's married to Hal's ex-wife and is threatening to adopt Hal's son. Perkins says the character writes "pedantic how-to-be-a-father books." James calls him an "alpha intellectual asshole." Sarah Levy of Schitt's Creek plays Hal and Bill's aunt, who raises the boys as children and also appears in the later timeline. "She meets, should we say, a particularly terrible end, probably the worst end of anyone in the whole movie," James teases.

Perkins found King's original short story to be conceptual, but there were touchstones he could expand upon to make a full-length movie — fatherhood being one. "I'm a father of three children. It's a very important part of my life," he says. "My relationship with my memory of my father and the impact of my father is a very important part of my psyche." Brotherhood was another. The source material downplays the sibling dynamic, but Perkins partly used his own relationship with his brother, Elvis Perkins, the folk-rock musician, to add just a splash of inspiration for Hal and Bill. "We went through the same insane sh--," he says of Elvis. "We responded to that insane sh-- very differently. We're very different people. Part of the process of living is finding your way back home."

"Oz described it as the monkey on your back, literally and existentially," James remarks of the entire film. "There is a literal monkey, a toy monkey, that's trying to f---ing massacre everyone. At the same time, it's a little bit of a dissection of family history and family trauma. There's multiple levels to this story."

Related: Nicolas Cage breaks down his 'androgynous' Longlegs role and using his mother as inspiration

Between Longlegs and now The Monkey, James hopes Perkins is in a position to do essentially whatever he wants. "I'd watched every single film of his and loved them all," he hails of his director. "Longlegs broke him into the mainstream, but he's always been making really good material."

As it happens, Perkins started making another movie between Longlegs and The Monkey. When he speaks with EW, it's the day after he filmed additional photography at a night shoot on Keeper, which brings back Maslany to play a woman who must deal with an unspeakable evil at a remote cabin in the woods after her husband leaves early from their romantic anniversary weekend. "She's f---ing amazing," Perkins gushes of the actress. "There's nothing she can't do."

As for his own mainstream notoriety, he's taking advantage of it. "The dynamo that is me is fully spinning," he says. "I don't need anybody's material. I've generated my own thing. We now have two theatrical movies [being released] in six months. That's hard to do, and it seems to be working. I'm going to ride it out."

The Monkey will premiere in theaters on Feb. 21, 2025.

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