By Mo Moshaty

If you’ve lived through generational trauma, The Monkey is gonna drum up some emotions. (Ka boom ding!)

Directed by Osgood Perkins, in his latest entry in generational terror, takes us to some dark, unexpected places when it comes to family bonds.

The movie kicks off with a bloodied-up Adam Scott as a desperate pilot, begging to get rid of a creepy little wind-up monkey that’s clearly ruined his life. But this isn’t just any old toy: it has no intention of being tossed aside. And if it can be given away, well… it’ll just keep doing what it does best: cutting lives short.

Scott’s character is the long-gone father of twin boys, Hal and Bill (played brilliantly by Christian Convery). Like most siblings, Bill, who’s just a few minutes older, never lets Hal forget it. He’s stronger, faster, more popular, and a total bully, both at home and at school. Hal? He’s always the punching bag.

Then there’s their mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), who’s just trying to keep it together. Their dad pulled the classic “going out for smokes” move and never came back. One day, while snooping through his old stuff, maybe out of boredom, maybe looking for some connection, the twins stumble across the Monkey. And the second they wind it up, all hell breaks loose.

Babysitters, family members, strangers—POOF! All dead. And the twins know exactly who’s to blame. So, they do what any terrified kids would do: bury the horror and try to forget.

Fast-forward 25 years, and Hal (Theo James) is living in a bubble, no family ties (Bill was kind of a dick anyway), no friends (by choice), and no real connection to his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien) (very much on purpose). Hal knows the unspoken rule that every superhero lives by: never get too close, because the villain will always come for the ones you love. Trouble is, the Monkey is back and with a vengence and it’s up to Hal to solve the mystery of how to stop it – incidentally during his last visitation week with his son before his stepfather, annoying lifestyle guru and fatherhood “expert” Ted (Elijah Wood) finalizes the adoption.

The Monkey takes us on a wild ride: slash, gore, guts… and heart. Untattered, battered, but unbroken.

Hal is like a lot of us, isolating himself because he knows the weight of pain. He worries that his trauma might be too much for others to bear, and honestly, his stance makes sense. But Bill carries his own heavy burden, he’s never been the same since The Monkey entered his world. He questions life, seeks vengeance, and targets those he holds responsible for all of his loss.

This film brings a mix of dark comedy and buckets of blood, my kind of win-win. But more than that, it’s another example of why I’ll always show up for Oz Perkins’ work. This theme of “everybody dies…and that’s fucked up” is a cinematic “laugh to keep from crying”. Perkins’ father died of AIDS, his mother, losing her life on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001. The man can’t escape the trauma and in all fairness, he has it in spades, and honestly, as creatives that’s what we do: we work through it, unpack it, and put it on screen or paper.

In Longlegs, Lee is fatherless while her mother struggles to protect her daughter however she can. In The Monkey, another absent father leaves a mother to raise her kids alone, forcing the boys to navigate their trauma in the only way they know how.

Oz, put your head on my shoulder, let’s work through this together.