Brief Story Line
In 1999, young twin brothers Hal and Bill (Christian Convery - Sweet Tooth TV series, Cocaine Bear etc) who were living with their mother Lois (Tatiana Maslany - She-Hulk: Attorney At Law TV series, The Other Half etc), found a Monkey toy left by their father and played with it. Unbeknownst to them, the toy somehow created an event that resulted to the death of someone close. Feeling it would be dangerous, they decided to hid it somewhere.
Twenty five years later, adult Hal (Theo James - The Gentlemen TV series, Divergent movies etc) planned to go on a brief road trip with his estranged son Petey (Colin O'Brien - Dear Edward TV series etc). But due to some reasons, he had to return to his hometown. However, accidental deaths seemed to occurr to the people around him which made Hal realized that the Monkey toy must have resurfaced. Now he had to do everything he could to save his son and himself.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie started off with something pretty exciting as it gave us the vibe of Final Destination movies. Subsequently we were introduced to the main characters, Hal and Bill who found the evil toy which changed their lives forever. The story actually developed nicely which was quite unique cause usually horror films tend to focus only on frightening audience. Though this one also did give us some jump scare scenes, but the story took quite center stage as well.
As the movie progressed, the deaths became more frequent and intense whenever the Monkey toy was played. The dark comedy was also quite strong in here especially the relationship between Hal and his son Petey. There was funny thing when one scene showed the town in Maine as my wife immediately thought it must be Stephen King's work which turned out to be true. During the closing credits, it was mentioned that the movie was based on King's 1980 short story of the same title. So it was pretty amazing that my wife noticed this fact.
For a film in the horror comedy genre, I thought the categorization was quite spot on. It was mainly horror combined with some comedy, but it did have some drama too. The acting of Theo James and Christian Convery as Hal and Bill were pretty good as both of them were convincing portraying two different people. I was pretty surprised that Convery was the one who played as Sweet Tooth cause I did not recognize him here. In addition to the names mentioned above, there were also other support cast like Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys TV series, Operation Christmas Drop etc) as the weird Ricky, Sarah Levy (Schitt's Creek TV series etc) as Hal & Bill's aunt Ida, Adam Scott (Madame Web, Severance TV series etc) as Petey Sr and very minor role played by Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Deep Impact etc). Even the movie's director Osgood Perkins (Gretel & Hansel and Longlegs) also played here as uncle Chip.
Overall this film was pretty enjoyable for me and my wife. Its horror was not in supernatural form (which was good for us who are mostly scared of such kind). There was some strong dark comedy as well, along with some drama. I thought Stephen King was quite brilliant in creating such story (even from the year 1980) and the directing was pretty awesome. It was quite well received by critics while audience were receptive enough as the box office performance was not disappointing (already made three times the budget). So if you are looking for a very scary terrifying supernatural horror movie with multiple jump scare scenes or a very eerie kind of horror, then likely you would not be entertained with this. However there is better chance you would enjoy it if you are into Stephen King's story like my wife and I did.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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