Just in time for holiday festivities, writer/director Osgood Perkins has shared a first-look clip from his new film “The Monkey,” a Stephen King adaptation out February 21. This is Perkins’ first film since “Longlegs” became Neon’s highest-grossing movie ever and one of the top-grossing horror movies of 2024.
This gory adaptation of the 1980 Stephen King short story centers on Theo James as twin brothers Haal and Bill, who witness a string of horrifying deaths where a toy monkey may hold a clue to the killings. The cast also includes Elijah Wood, Tatiana Maslany, and Sarah Levy (shown here in the clip as Aunt Ida, who gets her face mangled and hair set on fire), with Perkins writing and directing the film.
He’s said that “The Monkey” will be his most comic film to date. “It’s feeling more like an old John Landis movie or a Joe Dante movie or a Robert Zemeckis movie,” Perkin told The Hollywood Reporter. “I saw an opportunity to make a wry, absurdist comedy about death. It’s about the very basic fact that we all die — and how fucking funny and weird and impossible and surreal is that shit? And to come at it from a tragicomedy kind of voice felt like it fit.”
Perkins was previously candid with IndieWire about his parents’ deaths — including his father, actor and “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins — informed the satanic horrors of “Longlegs.” That film starred Maika Monroe as an FBI agent in the ’90s on the trail of a serial killer (Nicolas Cage) who holds an intense connection to her childhood.
He also talked about Neon’s nifty marketing campaign — which involved billboards, a fake phone line, and cryptic teasers — that helped turn “Longlegs” into a viral summer hit. “I would be a jackass to take too much credit for what they’ve done,” Perkins said. “[Neon] really responded strongly to the movie, the raw materials of the movie really excited them, the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it sounds. They asked me early on, ‘Do we have your permission to kind of go nuts?’ And I said, ‘What else are we doing here? Go for it. Do your thing.’”
It looks like “The Monkey” is following in similar fashion.
