Theo James in Osgood Perkins ‘Longlegs’ Tracking

Imagine a Live-Action Looney tunes in which death and destruction show realistically awful, and you have an idea of ​​what Osgood Perkins goes with his follow-up to last year’s Smash Hit Long. Loose (and I think loose) Adapted from the 1980 Stephen King’s Short Story, Monkey Proves the main stylish turn that will either be the horror fans the sweetest or just stupid. The main stylistic imagination of the film is to ship your characters in the most difficult more ways, which is a joke that is spent very quickly.

Returning the vintage EC comics in its deductible extraordinary page, Monkeywhich would probably better function as an episode in the movie Antology George A. Romero and Stephen King Sneakingdetermines his wacky assumption at the beginning. A clearly terrified man -covered man (Adam Scott in the entertainment camera) enters the antique trade and tries to sell the monkey of mechanical grinding organs to the skeptical owner. Man’s fears come true when a monkey suddenly starts hitting his drum, and a series of events in Ruba Goldberg style, which makes the owner graphically break.

It turns out that the potential seller was the father of the twin sons, Hal and Bill (both played by Christian Convey), who discovered the monkeys after his death in a box labeled “Like Life”. It turns out to be disturbing prophetic, because two brothers reveal that the demonic monkey seems to have the power to cause sudden violent deaths at will, demonstrated by an unhappy visit to Hibachi’s style with their unhappy nannies.

The message of the story of life is inevitably ended with over and over, including the mother of a boy (Tatiana Malany), who soon becomes a victim of that reality. They cheer for a living with their aunt (Sarah Levy) and Uncle (director Perkins, showing that he inherited the acting flair of his father Anthony), the latter of which soon suffer a particularly creepy death (say it will destroy your appetite for a cherry pie). After learning that they really couldn’t destroy a horrific toy, the boys try to get rid of it forever by throwing it into a well, which even they believe they really succeed.

Set to 25 years later, with now an adult Hal alienated from his brother (both played by Theo James), whom he has not seen for years. He is also the father of a teenage son (Colin O’Brien), whom he remained in the care of his ex-wife and her new husband (Elijah Wood, providing some horror-film bona fides) because he fears that the monkey will return and head for everyone which he loves. Nevertheless, the father and son go on a trip together, just as a series of terrible deaths affect the community.

You can feel Perkins’s apparent enthusiasm in setting up extravagantly complex, ultra-Bariy episodes playing like comic versions of those in Final destination Movies. The problem is that death is so cartoon that they become either terrible or funny, and sometimes intentionally the cheese special effects have no help. In the press note, the filmmaker explains: “We really tried for a nice horror movie.” This is a suspicious goal, especially when the results make the term feel too oxymoron.

That doesn’t mean that Monkey Sometimes it is not comfortable, thanks to Perkins’ indisputable stylistic smell and pure lush with which it executes stupid material. If you can come to the absurdist wavelength of the movie, you may be doing well, though it would help if James left with the absurd course of the film, not to play it mortally seriously. There are cases where the actor leaning against the role of Straight Man can make comic material even more fun (Leslie Nielsen’s late career is completely built on the premise), but this is not one of them.