Director Osgood Perkins Tells Us Why Horror Movies Are the Best Medicine

If laughter is the best medicine, then Osgood Perkins is trying to see if you can overdose on it with The Monkey. Fresh off the critical and commercial success of the procedural horror film Longlegs, the director’s latest effort finds him at his most endearingly irreverent, telling the story of a pair of brothers who discover that turning the key of their wind-up toy monkey results in the horrific deaths of everyone around them. These deaths are histrionic but never cruel, resembling the gags and pain of Wile E. Coyote rather than the macabre torture of Saw (ironically, Saw architect James Wan serves as a producer here).

You think you’ve seen all the ways someone can perish, but Perkins and his team deliver a bounty of new kills, outdoing themselves with a hilarious relentlessness. It feels both right and wrong to laugh at all the bloodshed, yet somewhere between someone getting blown to smithereens by a shotgun and another getting stabbed in the face (her head’s already been set on fire), the son of actor Anthony Perkins and actress and model Berry Berenson, both of whom passed under circumstances both tragic and absurd, asks how we are to live through and respond to the wanton violence all around us. Just before the film’s release, Perkins connected with me over Zoom to talk about the kill that had to be cut for time, making peace with the devil, the creative benefits of budgetary limitations, and learning to dance amidst death.

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ZACHARY LEE: Great to see you again, Oz. How are you?

OSGOOD PERKINS: What’s up, Zach?

LEE: I just caught the latest piece of Neon’s marketing for The Monkey—it just went live. Thanks for teaching me what exsanguination means.

PERKINS: It’s funny, I didn’t even know those words. My buddy actually wrote that copy and I was like, “Come on man, give me a break here. I’ve got to say this stuff.”

LEE: They’re trying to turn you into a slam poet. Are those fun to shoot?

PERKINS: Categorically not fun to shoot. However, it is fun to be supported by my friends at Neon. It’s a great time.

LEE: Now you’re talking to morticians, you’re screening it in churches.

PERKINS: It’s pretty unhinged. That’s not me, though. That’s them. I only make the pictures. I don’t do the rest of it.

LEE: I was at the Music Box screening here in Chicago. Do you like sitting in when people are watching the movie or hearing people’s reactions to kills that are taking place in the film?

PERKINS: Yeah. The first time we did that was in Los Angeles at The Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. It was 10 days after the fires had hurt everybody so badly and decimated the city, and everybody was feeling wounded and shocked. We were like, “Should we show the movie? Is it okay?” We thought, “It’s probably what people want, right? They want to laugh at something..” We showed it at the Egyptian to a bunch of eager fans and it brought the house down. It was the best feeling that I’ve had in my professional career with an audience. Longlegs was pretty extreme. People were really going nuts for that, but there was so much joy. That felt good—horror movies as medicine.

LEE: I was reading some interview where you were like, “If we send a capsule of human beings’ stuff to space, they’re going to see horror movies.”

PERKINS: Horror movies are how people deal with stuff.

LEE: At the Q&A, you’d shared that you and your team would have these death meetings where you decide the machinations of each one. I’m curious if there were any deaths that you weren’t able to include or were deemed too extreme, maybe because of budgeting restrictions.

PERKINS: It’s still a relatively small, modestly budgeted movie compared to what gets spent on movies, which means you have less time. We are lucky to get everything that we did. The only thing that fell by the wayside was a bit where a guy runs into his priest on the street and stops to chat, and there’s a construction site nearby and someone’s working a concrete saw—one of those saws that cuts the road open, they’re kind of wet. It slips out of the guy’s hand and it cuts the priest right down the middle. We were like, “We’ve got a lot of work to do, maybe we ought to just take that one off.” Maybe that one will be in the sequel.

LEE: You drop a bowling ball on a kid’s head in the first couple minutes of this, so there doesn’t seem to be any restrictions on what you’re going to be able to show or not show.

PERKINS: The one rule that I gave myself when I was writing it was none of these deaths can actually happen. Physics would get in the way of all of these. So in that way, they were meant to sort of emulate The Itchy & Scratchy Show or Chuck Jones or Wile E. Coyote, just the absurdity of death as opposed to the reality of it. You can’t crush your brother’s head with a bowling ball. It just wouldn’t work.

LEE: I’m happy you mentioned the priest because, for all the deaths in the film, the scariest and funniest moment for me was Nicco Del Rio’s scene-stealing sermon. It really encapsulated the film and what it’s trying to do. That’s a doomsday benediction for our times. I’d love to hear about casting Nicco. What went into writing that? 

PERKINS: What I found early in the development of the movie was that I was an expert on the fact that people can die suddenly and in crazy ways. I had experienced that firsthand, where it happened to people close to me. I was writing from a place of authority, which is where you want to be when you’re authoring something. By the time it got to the priest, it was me venting about this. Her head got cut off at a hibachi table. What are you going to say? “I’m sorry” or “things will get better” or “there’s a meaning for this.” He fumbles his way through this sermon. The material we shot is much longer and for the sake of rhythm we cut everything down. But his speech put next to mom’s speech in the movie represents this question: what are you going to do? Try to solve death by talking about it? Initially, in the casting of this priest, I saw him as a dry older guy. But then I was like, “No, this is a guy who’s not ready for it.” The dry older guy who usually gives a sermon is sick today and it’s this stoner who is going to do his best. He’s actually going to do great because everything he says is true. It’s comic only because it’s so matter-of-fact. But to me, it’s real honest.

LEE: Truly. There’s this line in the film where you’re talking about the intentionality of evil and purposefulness. With Hal and Bill, there’s the evil monkey. I like how you also leave this room for Aunt Ida, who has a lot of guns and is a pack rat. Can we blame the monkey? Can we blame our own vices? I would love to hear about towing that line. I could see a version of this where these things do happen and there’s no monkey. Is the monkey turning just coincidental?

PERKINS: You nailed it. In working with material in the early stages, you start to pick apart what it is and what it isn’t. You try to refine what you’re doing, what you mean by doing the material, and you recognize right away, “Oh, it’s not M3GAN. It’s not Chucky.” It doesn’t talk or come after you or walk or any of those things. It just sits there. It sits there almost like a god or an idol, staring straight ahead. The idea is that life and death happen all the time, every day, monkey or no monkey. Like I said earlier, I’ve experienced insane stuff. There’s no monkey around. I didn’t turn a key. When you get to that place, then you’re able to say it doesn’t need a mythology because it’s just the way things are. Because with the mythology comes the expectation that there’s a solution to it. But there is no vent in this. The monkey doesn’t have a weak point. You can’t destroy it, but they try. Because it has no mythology, it just is what it is. I thought that was the most real and the most chilling, but also the most surrendering way of dealing with death. You can’t beat it, so don’t even try. Just try to live with it.

LEE: Right. I read something where Blair Underwood [of Longlegs] was saying he would always be prayed up before going to set, because you are dealing with devils, dolls, all that stuff. You’ve been fascinated with the devil and its depiction throughout your projects. Do you get trepidation when you’re dealing with these subjects? 

PERKINS: It’s a great question and it rings true. When I did The Blackcoat’s Daughter, which was my first movie ever, I felt very alone. I didn’t know the job. I was doing it in the small town outside of Ottawa in Eastern Canada. I had never been colder or lonelier or more desolate in my life. There was a lot of fear. I felt the presence of a bad thing that really stalked me in the making of that movie. By the time we got to Longlegs, it felt like the reverse. It felt like whatever entity was out there that was being referenced was all of a sudden on my side, weirdly. There were all these insane coincidences and synergies and synchronicities. I really felt safe. I used to be like, “Should I be doing this? Maybe I’m pondering something bad.” But by the time we got to the end of Longlegs, I was like, “No, I think something’s looking out for me. I don’t know what it is and I’m not going to name it, but it feels all right.”

LEE: I know you get the devil. You see it throughout the film, too, in the references.

PERKINS: All you need is someone and something to look out after for you. Maybe you can’t choose your guardian angel. Maybe you just go with what you get.

LEE: Even in Longlegs, the devil is more of this active force, but like you were saying with the monkey, it’s just there. It’s stoic. Also, you pivoted to drumsticks in Keeper, despite the conditions of the strike. I’d love to hear about the role of limitations in your work and how you roll with the punches

PERKINS: Whenever you’re told you can do and have whatever you want, it’s very dwarfing. I feel very intimidated by complete freedom. Limitations create better ideas. I’ve been faced with success now, and it becomes like, “Well, don’t you want a huge budget?” Who said I’m happy my movie costs so much money? Nobody says that. I think you can really get lost in it. I think we all secretly wish that James Cameron would make a $10 million movie. It would be the most wonderful thing, but he has no interest. He has no desire at all. If you can do whatever you want, take as long as you want, spend unlimited amounts of money, it’s kind of like, “Eh, okay.” With Blackcoat’s Daughter, we had nothing and no time and no second takes on things. It was so fucking cold in Ottawa when we shot that movie. The scene in the backseat of the car when Emma Roberts’ character kills the parents and she gets splattered with the blood, we got one shot at that. You can’t put wet blood on Emma Roberts when it’s minus-30 degrees. You can do it once, and we got it right in the exact right place once. The cymbals were the same thing. Initially, I was like, “Oh man, I can’t use the cymbals because Disney owns the cymbals. Everyone’s going to want the cymbals, they’re going to expect the cymbals.” Then, 10 minutes later you’re like, “No, the drum is better in every way.” It’s rhythmic, it’s percussive, it suggests a drum roll, it suggests a rim shot. Thanks for the limitation. It really helps.

LEE: I’m happy you mentioned the shot because I love when we see the drumsticks swinging up and down. I feel like if it was cymbals, it might be more dizzying and disorienting.

PERKINS: It literally gives you a beat. It gives you a rhythm and a pace.

LEE: A sort of death cadence.

PERKINS: Exactly.

LEE: In light of all these recent plane crashes, I was thinking back on the film. There’s a plane crash, and nine and 11 are numbers that come up a lot, which I know is personal for you in terms of familial tragedy.

PERKINS: The horror genre continues to subsist with the idea that things have never been worse. They felt that way in the late ’60s during the Vietnam War, and it made Night of the Living Dead. It was so unimaginable that there could be something like the Vietnam War happening and then there’s this movie about undead people. We all want to say, “The world has never been worse. The world has never been crazier.” But everyone’s always said that for all of time. Can you imagine how crazy it was in the medieval times? The horror genre always exists as this salve on the fact that things appear to have never been worse, but they’ll always be that way. There will always be death and tragedy. You can’t fix that. You can’t move away from that. All you can do is take it with you.

LEE: Forgive me if you’ve already shared this before, but do you have thoughts on the afterlife? 

PERKINS: No idea. I’m playing with a totally empty deck. I got no predictions. I can’t say I’m worried about it. I can’t say I’m comfortable with it. I’m doing my best to just keep going, just going forward and living as best I know how.

LEE: Speaking of choosing to embrace and hold on to goodness, it’s been heartwarming to see your daughter pop up in your films from Gretel & Hansel to Longlegs. What’s a day on set when you get to work with her?

PERKINS: It’s really fun. She’s not particularly attached to it. It’s not her dream job. She’s not trying to get something out of it. She just enjoys the time spent. My daughter and I are very close, so it’s very natural to have her around. She’s insanely smart and such a funny person, and she’s just happened to be good with language and attitude. She’s a fourth-generation Perkins on screen, which is pretty wild. I don’t think there’s a lot of families that can say that. It’s a privilege to be able to work with people you love. When your kid wants to hang out with you, you’re doing something right.

LEE: I love that she’s this connective tissue throughout your projects.

PERKINS: I’m going to try to keep it going. Again, with no expectation or pressure that this is her thing, but at the moment it feels good.

LEE: I know you’ve described horror movies as addressing the fact that we have no idea of what’s happening and the importance of embracing the mystery. I’d love to hear about how you see The Monkey as a continuation of your creative relationship with mystery. Are there some things that you think should be off limits, things we shouldn’t try to explore? 

PERKINS: There’s a lot of really successful, really beautifully made movies that feel really bad. Ari Aster’s movies are so well done and so brilliant, but they make me feel so bad. What I hopefully achieved with The Monkey was feel-good horror, which felt like Stephen King to me. Stephen King has this enjoyment level and this entertainment factor in his work that invites you to enjoy the horror experience and have fun with it. The Monkey is supposed to be the most deliberate version of that. It’s okay to watch horror movies and have a good time.

LEE: You’ve referenced Star Wars as an influence, so I’m always curious to know if you’d take a stab at something in that world.

PERKINS: I don’t know that anybody wants me doing that. And I don’t know if I want to be doing that. I haven’t been offered any Star Wars things, I’ll tell you that.