Anyone ever traumatized by the hideous vintage windup toy of an organ-grinder’s monkey bashing together a pair of tiny, tinny cymbals, you may want to think twice before seeing The Monkey, based on a 38-page story by Stephen King and written and directed by Osgood Perkins. I’ve never seen one in real life, but the image is apparently eternal — like the evil that lurks within the hearts of toy designers who create such abominations as this and talking dolls.
The year is 1999, and young twins Hal and Bill (both Christian Convery), being raised by their understandably stressed single mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), are rooting around among things left behind by their long-absent dad (Adam Scott). The prize find: A windup toy monkey with a little drum. Turn the key in its back and it bangs the drum slowly after its lips fold back to reveal a disturbingly toothy smile. Cool! Except that every time you wind it up, someone dies. After one-time’s-a-fluke, two-times-coincidence, the unwittingly death-dealing duo show remarkable astuteness and throw the thing down a deep, unused well in rural Maine, where they’re now living with their aunt and uncle after ... well, let’s just say after.
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