Do you think about death a lot? Are you scared of it? Does it affect your life and your choices? Do you grieve easily? Have you come into close contact with death? Do you think about how you’d like to die? Has your life ever flashed before your eyes? Are there things you want to do before you die? Do you owe anyone an apology? Whose death will make you the saddest? What would you like people to remember you for after you go?
These are some of the questions Osgood Perkins lobs at viewers in his new film “The Monkey.” They’re also questions that I’ve been more inclined to contemplate after absentmindedly chewing on the package of silica gels that come in a bag of beef jerky than I was while watching “The Monkey.” For a film positively obsessed with death, Perkins’ latest feature, adapted from a short story by Stephen King, has very little to say about our demise other than crudely commenting on its inevitability. A bevy of convoluted, gory sequences comprise the film, stressing death’s unpredictable and unfair nature. Other times, characters spit the truth at viewers much more plainly. “Everyone dies and that sucks” is repeated so often throughout the movie that it starts to sound more like a serenity prayer than a frank mantra. (A more explicit version of this phrase is also the film’s tagline.)
