‘Osgood Perkins’ appears in sharp, thick print across the promotional materials for The Monkey, the latest adaptation of the Stephen King story about a toy chimp that causes a series of exponentially messy deaths. Perkins has been working as an actor and director for decades, but 2024’s indie horror phenomenon Longlegs launched him into Brand Name status. Shrewdly, film distributor Neon hopes to sell his latest film to an audience hungry for more of the dish they loved last time.

That audience won’t get what they’re expecting. And yet, as movie studios fixate on giving fans exactly what they want, Perkins may be making a name for himself by giving them exactly what he wants. The Monkey is, to put it gently, the peanut butter to Longlegs’ celery.

Perkins’ previous nauseating horror-thriller has a sly humor to it (what else can we make of Nic Cage’s prosthetic-centered performance?), but first and foremost, Longlegs is a grim and gloomy affair, taking inspiration from difficult horror like The Silence of the Lambs and Possession, along with infamously challenging domestic dramas like John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under........

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