In Osgood Perkins' recent film "The Monkey," a pair of twin brothers named Hal and Bill (both played by Christian Convery as boys, and by Theo James as adults) happen upon an outsize, wind-up drumming monkey toy that once belonged to their absentee father. The monkey has a creepy grin and is clearly cursed. When they wind up the monkey, it randomly causes the death of someone close to them. At first, they think they can control the monkey, but whenever they dispose of it, it always magically returns to them. They also learn that the monkey doesn't take requests. You wind it up, and it gets to choose its next victim.

Perkins' movie is a nasty little piece of work, undergirded by a marvelous sense of comedic sadism. The film opens with a scene of a man having his intestines pulled across a

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