Directed by Osgood Oz Perkins | Written by Perkins, from a Stephen King short story | 98 min | ▲▲▲1/2 | Amazon Prime

While a lot of people loved Perkins’ supernatural serial killer picture from last summer, Longlegs, I found it entertaining while wasn’t so quick to proclaim Perkins as a new genre master. This entry, coming hot on the heels of the last one,  is a long way from your typical, dour King adaptation. This is a lot more playful, cartoonish, and, yes, funny.

It starts back in 1999, where twin boys Hal and Bill ( both played by Christian Convery) don’t get along. They’re being raised by their single mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany) in a nice middle class home. Dad (Adam Scott), abandoned them, but before he did he left his family an old-fashioned drumming monkey toy.

Or did he? We also get a terrific scene where he takes a flamethrower to the monkey. It’s clear the monkey has a knack for resurrection. It’ll be no surprise that it is cursed — if you’ve seen any of the trailers or the posters, this thing is wildly creepy — and anytime someone turns the key in its back it triggers drumming and the cheery song, “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside.”

Soon, loved ones are dying all around these two boys. They end up in Maine at the home of their swinging aunt and uncle. Then we’re in the present, and adult Hal (now Theo James in his best role to date) mostly keeps to himself because he’s afraid the monkey will return and more people near him will die. That includes distancing himself from his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien), who lives with his mother and stepfather.

Of course, the monkey returns, and more people die. The deaths are spectacular. There’s really no other way to describe them. Unlikely, twisted, but spectacular.

I’ve never given much time to the Final Destination franchise, but I suspect this is a sillier, more self-aware iteration of that kind of thing. The camera loiters on the glowing eyes of the terrifying toy as it peels its lips back into a rictus grin. We can’t wait to see which one of this cast of mostly grotesques is going to get skewered, burned, or sliced into little bits next.  A couple of dream sequences where we step into monkey-fuelled psychedelia are especially impressive.

The Monkey works as a commentary on those gory-as-fuck horror pictures as well as occasionally having some fun with those familiar King tropes — tell me there isn’t a nod to The Mist in that final act when a car drives down a rural road in Maine.

And while it goes a little slack through the middle as it conjugates its daddy issues — it has mortality and inheritance on its mind, throughout — The Monkey finds its feet again in a delightful last 20 minutes of the most creative, giddy, and bloody deaths yet.