The Horror Show
The Monkey’s Paw
by Brett Simmons
You know that classic horror story The Monkey’s Paw right? Yeah, that story about the wish granting monkey hand with a dark sense of irony. The same story that has been adapted into film and television countless times. It’s been adapted into a movie again, and well, boy is it terrible.
Jake is the supervisor in a factory, he’s also friends with his underling, Tony Cobb. However, Jake is kind of incompetent and he lets Tony get away with sleeping on the job. Gillespie, Jake’s boss, is not happy about this. A mistake gets past Jake and the owner finds out about it; it cost the company money, and someone needs to pay for it. That person is Gillespie, and he gets canned. Later that night Jake and Tony are out drinking, Jake is whining about how hard his life is; he has no car, no girl, a dead end job, he’s paying his brother’s bills, and his mom has cancer. Tony tells him to chill, because everyone has problems, for example: Tony fell in love once and he had a son with that girl but she has a restraining order, for unspecified reasons, against him.
That night they see Gillespie at the bar, they attempt to make amends for getting him fired. Gillespie is pissed, so he tells them off, but then Jake sees the titular monkey’s paw on the table. Gillespie tells them about how it’s supposed to grant wishes and he implores Jake to try it out. He wishes for the sports car sitting in the parking lot as a joke. Then Tony jumps up and declares that he wants to try, Gillespie intervenes and tells him no, it belongs to Jake will continue to be his until he uses all three wishes. Jake and Tony leave and they notice that the car Jake wished for is unlocked and the keys are still in the ignition. They do what any morally conscious person would do. They steal the car. The joy ride is cut short when they crash and Tony is ejected from the car, seemingly dead. Jake wishes for Tony to not be dead, not noticing any change and a car rolling up Jake flees. Moments later Tony stands up, he’s alive but wrong. He’s blood thirsty and he wants Jake’s last wish.
I’ll start with what I liked most about this movie. The movie starts out vague, attempting to get the viewer to decide whether the paw is magical or if everything is just a coincidence. Someone could have just accidentally left their keys in the ignition, it happens to everyone. It’s also entirely possible that Tony didn’t really die, he just believed the wish brought him back to life and that’s why he wanted the monkey’s paw so badly. Slowly it becomes more and more obvious that the monkey’s paw really is granting wishes. Tony Cobb has super human strength and durability and the longer he’s alive the more corpse like he becomes; he’s pale and starts to bleed from the eyes and mouth.
I think this is where the movie starts to go downhill. I like the idea of leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether it’s real or coincidence. But the movie suffered by defaulting on the supernatural explanation.
The whole reason Tony wants the paw is so that he can finally spend time with his son. All the poor man wants to do is take him fishing. I guess without a soul he’s unable to think logically. So murder becomes the only reasonable solution. Tony surmises that Jake is saving his last wish to get back together with Olivia, Jake’s ex. In reality, Jake just lost the paw. Tony tells him that he doesn’t need the paw to get her back, so Tony kills Olivia’s husband. The killer thing is that it works, Olivia starts spending time with Jake. Tony informs Jake that his wish came true and now Jake no longer needs the monkey’s paw. Jake still doesn’t have it, so Tony murders everyone close to Jake and takes Olivia hostage. Here’s the thing, all Tony had to do is wait until Jake made his final wish, then Jake would have given Tony the paw and he would have been free to make three wishes. Everyone wins, except no one would win, because we all know the monkey’s paw is a double edged sword.
I’ve come to the conclusion that everyone in this movie is a terrible problem solver. Spoilers Ahead. During the final confrontation, Tony holds a blade to Olivia’s throat and wants Jake to make Tony’s wish. Instead of complying, Jake says, “I wish my friend, Tony Cobb, had his soul back.” I remember that exact quote because it pissed be off so much. As expected, it also pissed off Tony Cobb, and in his anger he stabs Olivia. He then proceeds to be the crap out of Jake before hesitating for a moment. Jake then uses the opportunity to stab him in the eye with a flash light. Tony confesses all he wanted to do is take his son fishing and he’s sorry, he then blows his brains out. Firstly, all Jake had to do was just appease Tony and it probably would’ve gone okay. I doubt it would have, but it would have been a better option. Secondly, all he had to do was make a very specific wish that couldn’t be turned against him. I swore the whole movie he was going to make the right wish which would be as follows, “I wish that I, Jake Tilton, never accepted to make a wish on the monkey’s paw in the first place, and that none of the events after making said wish ever happened, and everyone’s life continued as it would have normally.” Done, that’s how you beat the ironic wishes, just get really specific. Sadly, I can’t communicate with movies and tell them what to do, yet.
I really wanted this movie to be good because The Monkey’s Paw is a classic tale and it is a pop culture icon. Everyone knows the story, I mean they may not know it exactly but they get the gist of it. Honestly, Jake wastes his first two wishes early on in the movie and waits until the end to use his last wish. I wish on the monkey’s paw that he evenly distributed his wishes throughout the movie. Like, eighty percent of the movie is just Tony Cobb killing people. I mean, the titular item is barely even shown in the film. I guess it’s just a pacing issue. Despite incompetent characters and other issues the movie had, I did seem some potential early on. If the movie managed to be a little more ambiguous, I think the film would have been more interesting. It just got too ridiculous way too fast. Director Brett Simmons has done some work I’m familiar with such as Husk and Animal. They weren’t anything monumental but they were okay movies. It’s easy to pace a movie when the main characters are running from a physical conflict, but I guess when it comes to running from an abstract concept it gets harder to pace a movie. It’s a shame that such a classic story has turned into a tired tale.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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