FLIM
THE MONKEY
THE ULTIMATE IN SIMIAN TERROR
Monkey business.
★★★
OUT 21 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 100 MINS
DIRECTOR Osgood Perkins
CAST Theo James, Christian Convery, Tatiana Maslany, Sarah Levy, Colin O’Brien, Elijah Wood
PLOT As a child, Hal (Convery) was terrorised by a toy monkey that acted as a harbinger of death. Now Hal (James) is in his thirties. And the monkey is back.
IN THE ’70S and early ’80s, perhaps the only thing that Stephen King liked more than a child with a psychic gift/curse (Carrie, The Shining, Firestarter) was an inanimate object that becomes possessed by evil. A car, HGVs and even a laundry press lurched into life to wreak destruction, and all of these mechanical menaces made their inexorable way from page to screen, directed by John Carpenter (Christine), King himself (Maximum Overdrive, based on short story ‘Trucks’) and Tobe Hooper (The Mangler).