If you make a good film, people want to work with you. It’s a simple truth that director Osgood “Oz” Perkins has experienced more than once in his career in indie horror, most recently with the cast of Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage Long legs from the beginning of this year. “It was proven that my strange material could actually be worth a dollar,” explains the filmmaker Gretel and Hansel (2020) and I’m the pretty one who lives in the house (2016) comments during an interview with Weekly entertainment.

That was also the case The monkeyPerkins’ adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 short story about a cursed toy and the horrors inflicted on twin brothers.

Actor Theo James (Netflix). The gentlemenHBO’s The White Lotus) and Michael Clear, the production manager of James Wan’s company Atomic Monster, both independently sought him out The Blackcoat’s daughter (2015). James initially wanted to explore a television project: a gothic tale based on a true story about a witch hunt in northern England during World War II as “a reflection of human nature surrounded by the crumbling edifice of Britain,” in the actor’s words. This particular series never came to fruition, but in another part of Hollywood, Clear and fellow producer Peter Safran had the rights to it The monkey and a script that didn’t work. However, Perkins made it work with a pitch that felt off-field even to the people at Clear’s Banner, the company behind it incantation films, M3GANAnd Mortal Kombat.

“What if it was a comedy?” Perkins posits. “Here’s this monkey who doesn’t do anything. It’s not M3GAN. He doesn’t attack. He is evil in his very existence. Things happen around him for no better reason than they do. His presence causes people to die in insane ways.”

Perkins found a more personal connection when reflecting on his own life story. His father was Psycho Star Anthony Perkins, who had relationships with men until he underwent conversion therapy. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992. His mother was photographer Berry Berenson, who died on September 11, 2001 as a passenger on the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11. “I’ve seen people die in really deeply crazy ways,” Perkins continues. “Everyone dies whether there is a monkey or not. What if you could do that with a smile—process the fact that everyone dies? And what a crazy, surrealistic idea, dude!” You will die; So everyone dies. This is crazy, shit. Doing it as a comedy seemed very fitting.”

“He wanted to make a family film, but an R-rated one,” says James, who recently saw a clip of the film. “It’s extremely dark, but it also has heart and is really funny.”

As children, played by Christian Convery (Cocaine bearNetflixs sweet tooth), Hal and Bill live with their mother (Orphan Blackis Tatiana Maslany). Her father, an airline pilot, picked up the proverbial pack of cigarettes and never returned, as the saying goes. The children decide to rummage through his old things, the knick-knacks from his international travels. Among the bonsai trees, wooden shoes, boomerangs and other family items is a small toy monkey with black, empty eyes and an unsettling grin. When they open it with a key, “something happens,” Perkins teases. “They’re doing pretty badly. They are very directly affected in a terrible way.”

One such bad thing happens during dinner at a hibachi grill, a scene inspired by nights in Benihana with the Perkins family. It’s a perfect example of the tone the director wanted to set, that mix of horror and comedy. Perkins References Death suits her And American Werewolf in London. “Without saying what happens, it’s ridiculous and funny,” he teases of this hibachi sequence. “The children in the film talk all the time. My 15 year old daughter says f— every other word. That’s just a way of saying that the design is meant to make everything smile.” appear on your face.

The twins try to destroy the monkey, but they don’t succeed. They try to contain it, but they also can’t. Eventually they manage to dispose of it and for 25 years they believe they are safe. As an adult (now played by James), Bill becomes estranged from his brother, while Hal refuses to see his own young son most of the year for fear that the monkey will reappear and harm his family. Of course, the only time Hal plans a father-son road trip is when the monkey rematerializes, forcing Hal and Bill to reunite to deal with the situation.

James wanted each of the brothers’ appearances to be as contrasting as possible. For Hal, early Tom Hanks was his touchstone. “Someone you trust implicitly (who) may make mistakes along the way, but is fundamentally a good person,” he explains. Bill, who is four minutes older, “has probably been extremely volatile from birth, almost sociopathic, and has all the illusions of size that go with that.”

Put even more simply: “Bill is an idiot,” Perkins adds. “He’s a show-off and kind of stupid. Hal is gentle and sensitive.”

Yellowjackets And Lord of the rings Star Elijah Wood also appears in The monkey as Ted Hammerman, who is married to Hal’s ex-wife and threatens to adopt Hal’s son. Perkins says the character writes “pedantic books about being a father.” James calls him an “alpha intellectual asshole.” Sarah Levy from Schitt’s Creek plays Hal and Bill’s aunt, who raises the boys as children and also appears in the later timeline. “She suffers, shall we say, a particularly terrible ending, probably the worst ending of all in the entire film,” James teases.

Perkins felt King’s original short story was conceptual, but there were touchstones he could build on to make a full-length film – including fatherhood. “I am a father of three children. This is a very important part of my life,” he says. “My relationship with my memory of my father and the impact of my father is a very important part of my psyche.” Brotherhood was something different. The source material downplays the sibling dynamic, but Perkins partly used his own relationship with his brother, Elvis Perkins, the folk-rock musician, to add just a hint of inspiration for Hal and Bill. “We went through the same crazy shit,” he says of Elvis. “We reacted to this crazy shit in very different ways. We are very different people. Part of life is finding your way back home.”

“Oz described it as the monkey on your back, literally and existentially,” James notes of the film as a whole. “There is literally a monkey, a toy monkey, trying to massacre everyone. At the same time, it is a small analysis of family history and family trauma. There are multiple layers to this story.”

Between Long legs and now The monkeyJames hopes Perkins can essentially do whatever he wants. “I have seen every single one of his films and loved them all,” he praises his director. “Long legs brought him into the mainstream, but he always made really good material.

Coincidentally, Perkins started making another film in between Long legs And The monkey. When he speaks to EW, it’s the day after he took additional photos on a night shoot guardianin which Maslany plays a woman who must confront an unspeakable evil in a remote cabin in the woods after her husband leaves their romantic anniversary weekend early. “She’s fucking amazing,” Perkins enthuses about the actress. “There’s nothing she can’t do.”

As for his own mainstream fame, he takes advantage of it. “The dynamo that I am is running at full speed,” he says. “I don’t need anyone’s material. I developed my own thing. We now have two movies (coming out in theaters) in six months. This is hard to do, and it seems to work. I’ll go along with it.”

The monkey will premiere in theaters on February 21, 2025.