Interviews
‘The Monkey’ Director & Star Talk Dual Roles, Gory Kills & Surprising Tom Hanks Inspirations [Interview]
Despite creating some moody, atmospheric, and scary horror movies like The Blackcoat’s Daughter or even last year’s Longlegs, writer/director Osgood Perkins doesn’t enjoy making people feel bad. The filmmaker also really loves to laugh. Enter his latest, The Monkey, an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story that goes for broke in terms of outrageous gallows humor dialed up to gory excess.
The Monkey let Perkins go full throttle on the humor, delivering a crowd-pleaser that prefers raucous entertainment over brooding chills. So much so that it feels like a natural progression of Longlegs, which also featured similar themes of family and traces of the same absurdist humor.
While the overlap in themes speaks more to the filmmaker’s sensibilities rather than a narrative or worldbuilding connection between films, Perkins’ reflection of this highlights a surprising fact: he finds Longlegs to also be a comedy like The Monkey.
“They’re in conversation with each other because they’re both made by me, and I’m sort of figuring out the same shit on all the movies,” Perkins tells Bloody Disgusting. “If all this stuff is just an expression of me, then it’s just an expression of me, and the various things that circle my psyche, and that trouble me, or that I’m trying to loosen up, or untie the knot off. I think it’s like you see painters who paint the same, essentially, picture a thousand times.”
Perkins continues, “I might be a little bit in that school, I think, where I’m working out the same garbage all the time, just in slightly different forms. But I thought Longlegs was funny as shit. I laugh more than anybody. I’m a notorious laugher at the monitor, and I’m overheard laughing a lot. Maika Monroe had a hard time with me on Longlegs because I laughed through most of her scenes, to be honest with you. I just found that character to be so adorable and hilarious.“
In Perkins’ gory comedy The Monkey, Theo James pulls double duty as twins Hal and Bill Shelburne, estranged brothers whose family seems doomed by the mysterious toy monkey that seemingly claims lives with ruthless randomness. Hal and Bill couldn’t be further apart in every way, from personality to style, providing James with two distinctly different characters to explore. More impressively, the dual roles let James showcase different types of humor, between Hal’s browbeaten milquetoast type and Bill’s abrasive yet oafish behavior.
Photo Courtesy of NEON
That humor extends beyond the screen. It was comedy that resonated with James when taking on the dual roles. James says, “Oz and I found quite quickly that we have a similar sense of humor.”
“Thank God,” Perkins interjects.
James affirms, “Thank God. That just means day-to-day shooting the shit and making shit jokes. But in terms of playing the characters, we wanted the same thing out of the humor, if you know what I mean. That was lucky. But in terms of the moment that made me realize or connect to them, because honestly, Oz, our first chat was him relating his own, a bit of his own personal story to the existential elements of The Monkey, i.e., what the monkey represents. Again, it’s a comedy; it’s entertainment, but The Monkey is more than just the toy. It’s the legacy of the monkey on your back and how a piece of trauma follows you through your life.
“Oz described it as points in your life: do you feel like you can’t shake this thing, whether it’s a literal curse or just something that has followed you through your life, and can you ever get rid of that shadow, or is it always going to be there. That made me understand the whole story and both characters in a much more complex way and helped me unwrap them.”
“The touchstone that I put to Theo was, ‘Remember when Tom Hanks was just the goofy everyman before he became the savior of the world and everybody’s hero?'” says Perkins. “He was just the goofy guy in Money Pit, for instance, a beleaguered Joe. When we laid into like, ‘Oh, yeah, we have shared affection for beleaguered Joe Tom Hanks,’ then that became code.”
“Yeah, that was definitely a touch point. It was Tom Hanks in Money Pit, and I watched that film. Also, the style of comedy with Hal was the idea that he’s experienced it a lot. You always talked about how he’s not shocked all the time,” James says to Perkins. “He’s like, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, this is happening again.’ But then back to your point about the solidity of him, we also were keen to make him relatively real as possible, because if you make him too nonchalant, or too silly, or too knowing, as you said, with the wink in the eye, then the movie loses a bit of its heart, and it loses some of the stakes. So there had to be a real emotionality to him to an extent, right?”
Perkins recounts a small moment of humor and pathos that stands out in James’ performance. “One of my favorite bits in the movie is when he’s in the hotel room with his son, and his son is filling out his family tree thing, and says, ‘What’s your mom’s name?’ I said to Theo on that day, to Hal, the character, I said, ‘Think of it as you’ve never said your mom’s name since she died. You’ve never said it out loud since she died. You don’t dare to say your mom’s name. And he’s just asked you what your mom’s name is.’ I must say, beautifully done, beautifully done. When you rewatch the movie, you’ll see he is barely able to get out the word Lois. It’s very beautifully done. Those little moments of real human agony, as quiet and underplayed as they are, really make the rest of this stuff work. Good job.”
As for the titular killer toy, there’s no question that the design is effective. The Monkey may be a gory comedy-horror movie, but that little wind-up drummer is creepy. Perkins reveals that it didn’t take very long at all to arrive at its design: “Because it’s written in the script, and I wanted to join the expected look because I feel like people look at toy monkeys and they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s something creepy about that. I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s something uncanny and weird about a toy monkey. There’s something unsettling about that.’
“So, I wanted to lean into that and not deviate from what was expected. But at the same time, because it’s a supernatural presence, I wanted to give it this question of like, ‘Is it real? Is there a real thing to it?’ So, its teeth are smokers’ yellow. They’re real teeth-looking things. Its feet and the way it grips the drum underneath look like they’re real. I wanted it to have this somewhat anthropomorphic vibe, like, ‘Does it move by itself when it’s not being watched?’ But once we locked into that, the concept guy got it pretty fast.”
Amazing cast and creepy toy monkey aside, the element of The Monkey that will have audiences buzzing the most are the inventive and endless kills. So many that even the packed trailer can’t highlight them all. “A lot of them were there from the very first inception, but some of them changed. But yeah, you’re just dipping into Oz’s fucked mind,” James teases of the kill count.
Perkins cracks, “My job is just to make up. I tell it to my kids all the time, ‘Yep, dad’s going to work now. I’m going to make a bunch of shit up. I’ll be back later.’ And that’s really what it is. Some people go and drill teeth, I put words next to each other to make shit up. When you’re writing stuff like this, I’m just trying to entertain somebody. Do you know what I mean? That’s the goal of the movie, which is to entertain a theater full of people because we need theaters full of people.“
The Monkey releases in theaters on February 21, 2025.
Interviews
The Work ‘Grind’ Is Hell, So Brea Grant & Ed Dougherty Made a Horror Anthology About It [CFF 2026 Interview]
Genre fans rejoice! Chattanooga Film Festival is back for its 13th year in 2026 with a killer lineup and once again offering audiences both in-person and virtual options. After having its World Premiere at SXSW this spring, the horror comedy anthology Grind is playing CFF 2026 opening weekend.
From a screenplay by Brea Grant (Torn Hearts, 12 Hour Shift) and Ed Dougherty (MLM) and segments directed by Grant, Dougherty, and Chelsea Stardust (Satanic Panic), Grind features four interwoven stories that parody the gig economy, hustle culture, and the evils of late-stage capitalism.
The anthology follows weary everyday people juggling side hustles just to survive, while going up against greedy oligarchs, and cleverly uses dark humor and bloody practical effects to portray a world much like our current economic nightmare.
Bloody Disgusting had the pleasure of chatting with Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty about the socioeconomic commentary in Grind, casting Barbara Crampton as a villain, and DIY filmmaking.
Bloody Disgusting: Every segment in this anthology feels relatable because people are actually struggling to survive in the gig economy right now. How did the two of you come up with the idea of creating Grind?
Brea Grant: Like you said, we were trying to come up with a cool idea that seemed relevant right now. The thing that everyone we know is talking about is the economy, the lack of work, and the nightmare hellscape that is late-stage capitalism. It felt like the right time to write something that really featured that as the main horror. As the main thing that people were scared of, this world sort of came to us over the course of a couple of years.
Ed Dougherty: We wanted to make a hit film, and we said, “Let’s make a horror anthology, that’s the most marketable thing there is.” [laughs]
BG: [laughs] Definitely not!
BD: I love anthologies!
ED: We do, too. We feel like it’s kind of an undervalued form of horror film, but it’s a hard sell.
BG: People told us not to make it. They said, “Don’t make an anthology. It’s too hard to sell.” But we did it anyway.
BD: I guess I’m just one of those weirdos who likes anthologies and watches them all.
ED: We believe that there are a lot of weirdos like you out there. It seems like every good horror anthology has a long life, but it’s just getting over the initial hump that’s difficult.
BD: Chelsea Stardust directed some of the segments with the two of you and serves as a producer. How did she first get involved with this project?
BG: The project has a long history. We shot the first segment, which is about multi-level marketing, a couple of years ago. We had decided we wanted to make a full anthology, but it took us about a year after shooting that initial segment to shoot the rest of the movie. When we did that, we knew we needed to bring on a producer aside from Ed and me, since we were directing the bulk of the movie, so that was how she came on board. I’ve been friends with her for a long time, and the one thing I know about her as a friend is that she is very organized, so it felt like a good fit. I just called her one day and said, “Would you want to produce these three segments that we have left to shoot of Grind?” and she came on board.
BD: There are some fun cameos in Grind, but we have to talk about Barbara Crampton. She’s so good as a villainess. Why did you want her for this role, and what was it like working with her on this film?
BG: She’s in her villain era, which is so fun. [laughs] Obviously, we’re huge Barbara Crampton fans, and when we were making MLM, it was a smaller part of the movie that we knew we needed to call on people who could do a good job but were also friendly to us [laughs]. I’m friends with Barbara Crampton, and we’ve done three movies together before this. So, it felt like someone within our reach, but could also really draw a horror crowd. She has a huge fanbase, and she’s also super supportive of all the projects that she’s been in, so that was also really exciting. She’s a great actress, and she’s super funny. I think a lot of these horror actresses, especially those who came up in the eighties and nineties, weren’t given an opportunity to be funny. I think she was ready to jump on an opportunity that was different than what she was used to; it’s not running around and screaming. She is a cult leader, and she is quite funny in it. She just takes the comedy so well and seriously, and she does such an amazing job with it. She has a scene across from Rob Huebel, who is obviously a comedy master, and I feel like the two of them together were hilarious. It’s been fun to watch Barbara go from these iconic roles to a different kind of role at this point in her career. We’re super happy to be a part of that.
ED: And she loves the movie and has been so supportive. Every time she posts about it, I’m like, “I can’t believe this. This is amazing.”
BD: This is an accurate parody of the current socioeconomic situation in this country, as well as our obsession with online culture. It repeatedly asks the question, “What are you willing to do to make money,” in a world with wealth inequality and evil oligarchs. It’s fun, and it’s a horror movie, but it’s thought-provoking. What do you hope audiences take away from Grind, besides having a good time?
ED: I read every review and every Letterboxd review; Brea does not. So, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen some reviews that say, “Good movie but doesn’t propose a solution.” I think we do propose a solution, which is that the power of unions and organizing is the only way that we will be able to fight back against oligarchs. I do think that is the message of the film. Organizing is the only way to defeat these villains. I do think we have a lot to say in the film. I’d want someone to say, “Man, I’ve never seen a horror anthology that had a political message before.” [laughs]
BG: I think the other thing is that what is currently happening is that we live in a world in which people kind of feel alone in this. They’re like, “Well, I’m doing bad, “or “I’m having trouble paying my rent.” We wanted to hang a lantern on the fact that this is happening to everyone, that wealth disparity is at an all-time high. We’re pointing out to people that you aren’t in this alone; you’re not the only person doing side hustles. Every filmmaker friend I have is working a side job of some sort at this point, and that is just in Los Angeles. Outside of this city, I think things are more dire. I think it was about infusing some politics into something that could make people realize that they aren’t alone and that there are ways of fighting back and fighting the system that has been set up against them.
ED: I think the tone of the movie, which is darkly comedic, also really matches the tone of life right now. Everything seems almost at a parody level as far as the disconnect between oligarchs and trying to make a living and reality. The absurdist nature of the film kind of captures the real tone of life.
BD: There are some cool creature effects and makeup effects in this movie. Can you talk a little bit about the practical effects and makeup?
ED: I think especially because of the message of the film, which is pushing back against the current hellscape we’re in, we wanted to use as many practical effects as possible. We used matte paintings, miniatures, and practical creature effects. I’m always afraid of the matte painting because we used the old school matte painter, but they do look a little AI. I heard someone make a noise behind me during one of the shots, and I was like, “I hope that noise wasn’t them using AI because that’s a matte painting.” [laughs] There’s also the fact that it’s pretty DIY. It’s a film that we financed ourselves and shot in our houses as much as possible. We wanted the whole thing to feel handmade and very tactile.
BG: We’re old school horror fans, so we love seeing practical effects. The practical stuff is really fun for us. It’s the stuff that we think is actually cool. [laughs] So, practical stuff made the most sense for us. We both grew up in the punk scene in the nineties, and I think it just kind of comes naturally to us to try to do things ourselves. And we both work on projects for big companies, with smaller companies, but always for other people, so trying to do something ourselves to see what that felt like was also part of the experiment of Grind.
ED: This was our chance to do everything we wanted our way.
Grind screens at the Chattanooga Film Festival on June 20.
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