Horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins is on a roll, racking up his second hit in a row with “The Monkey,” which recently became the second biggest-ever box-office opener for its distributor Neon — only behind Perkins’ previous film, “Longlegs.”
Adapted from a Stephen King short story and produced by horror mogul James Wan, “The Monkey” stars Theo James as a pair of twin brothers whose family has been cursed by an evil toy monkey, which causes someone’s death each time it plays its jaunty little song.
The elaborately staged deaths are the highlight of the movie, which is an amusing diversion that laughs in the face of mortality. Audiences have clearly responded to its sick sense of humor, so if you caught “The Monkey” in theaters and are looking for more from Perkins, King and other creators with similar sensibilities, here are five more movies to check out.
‘Longlegs’
Perkins’ previous movies have not exactly been known for their sense of humor, but there’s a hint of the gleeful absurdity of “The Monkey” in the title character of this otherwise heavy, foreboding film.
Nicolas Cage gives a wonderfully unhinged performance as the serial killer known as Longlegs, speaking in a high-pitched voice, often with manic intensity. Behind his scraggly wig and pasty white makeup, Cage contorts his face into the human equivalent of the monkey toy’s diabolical grin.
Longlegs himself has a less prominent presence than the title implies, and the rest of the movie is a dread-soaked, often terrifying story about a young FBI agent (Maika Monroe) investigating a series of killings that may be tied to her own mysterious past. As Perkins’ first major hit, it shows his confidence and ambition as a horror visionary.
►Watch on Hulu
‘Oculus’
Horror kingpin Mike Flanagan’s breakthrough film is also about a family’s violent legacy as passed down via a cursed object — in this case an ornate antique mirror.
Karen Gillan is delightfully deranged as a woman who is determined to destroy the relic that she blames for the death of her parents. Gillan’s Kaylie even constructs a “kill switch” that will automatically destroy the mirror in case she and her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) are unable to overcome its evil powers.
Flanagan mixes past and present storylines in a manner that increasingly blurs the distinctions between the two timelines, as well as between reality and hallucination. Gillan brings a twisted sense of humor to her portrayal of single-minded vengeance against a wall decoration, and the movie follows her morbid lead.
►Watch on Prime Video
‘Christine’
Stephen King has found the horror in plenty of everyday items over the years, but his most effective might be this story about a malevolent 1958 Plymouth Fury, which corrupts the soul of its teenage owner, Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon).
Just as Perkins does with “The Monkey,” director John Carpenter puts his own stamp on King’s work, retaining the core of the source novel while taking a more streamlined approach in line with his horror classics like “Halloween” and “The Fog.”
Carpenter makes the demonic car as malevolently unknowable as Michael Myers, turning signifiers of sunny 1950s culture (the bright red car, greaser fashion, oldies music) into symbols of menace. Both Gordon and John Stockwell (as Arnie’s concerned best friend) give strong performances, and Carpenter effectively balances character development with terror, in one of the best and still most underrated King adaptations.
‘Oddity’
The title of writer-director Damian McCarthy’s film refers to an entire shop full of supernaturally charged curiosities, owned by blind psychic Darcy Odello (Carolyn Bracken).
Darcy brings one of those objects, a disturbing life-size wooden mannequin, to the remote home of her brother-in-law Ted Timmis (Gwilym Lee) on the anniversary of her twin sister Dani’s murder. The seemingly helpless Darcy uses the mannequin to terrorize Ted’s new girlfriend and ultimately to enact her revenge on her sister’s killer.
Bracken is excellent in her dual roles, and McCarthy is great at crafting creepy images, with unsettling locations and objects. One of those objects from McCarthy’s first film, “Caveat,” is a drum-playing rabbit toy that would be right at home alongside the similar-looking monkey, and it makes a brief cameo that hints at an intriguing small-scale “Conjuring”-style universe.
►Watch on AMC Plus
‘Drag Me to Hell’
In between blockbuster studio gigs on his era-defining 2000s Spider-Man movies and his later franchise projects “Oz the Great and Powerful” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” director Sam Raimi made this appealingly nasty horror movie that recalls his scrappy early genre work.
Alison Lohman plays a loan officer who finds herself cursed when she turns down a customer’s mortgage extension. The movie is darkly funny and unrelentingly brutal in tormenting its protagonist for a fairly minor transgression, taking sadistic pleasure in pulling the rug out from under her and from under the audience, too.
In her final movie before retiring from acting, the still-underrated Lohman is great as the hapless woman who’s trying in vain to save her soul. Like the characters in “The Monkey,” she only makes her situation worse as she attempts to set things right.
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