THE MONKEY'S PAW (2013)

Studio:       Chiller Films
Director:    Brett Simmons
Writer:       Macon Blair, W.W. Jacobs
Producer:  Ross Otterman
Stars:     C.J. Thomason, Michelle Pierce, Corbin Bleu, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Charles S. Dutton, Tauvia Dawn, Stephen Lang

Review Score:

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Summary:

A magical talisman grants its owner three wishes, but not without unleashing dark consequences for meddling with fate.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Jake Tilton works at Trident Supply in Louisiana with his friends Tony Cobb and Catfish. Their supervisor is Gillespie and the top manager is Kevin, who is married to Jake’s ex-girlfriend Olivia. Kevin fires Gillespie, who blames the poor performance of his employees, particularly Jake, for making him look bad.

Outside a bar after work, several Trident employees notice a loaded GT Mustang in the parking lot. Over a drink, Cobb tells Jake that his ex-wife Abby has a restraining order preventing him from seeing his young son Corey.

Jake and Cobb find Gillespie drinking away his sorrows alone. On the table is a monkey’s paw. Gillespie tells them the tale of how the talisman grants its owner three wishes. He gives the paw to Jake and tells him to make a wish. Jake jokingly wishes for the GT in the parking lot. Gillespie tells Jake that he is now the paw’s new owner.

Cobb finds the keys in the Mustang and convinces Jake to take it for a joyride. Jake swerves to miss an alligator in the road and hits a tree. Cobb ejects through the windshield and dies. Jake flags down a passing car, but leaves the scene after wishing that Cobb were not dead. Cobb reanimates. A woman takes Cobb home to treat his wounds and he kills her. Meanwhile, Jake throws the paw away in frustration.

In the morning, Detective Margolis notices Jake outside the police station as he contemplates reporting Cobb’s death, but Jake leaves instead. Cobb confronts his ex-wife about wanting to see their son. Later, Jake finds Cobb in the cemetery and Cobb tells him that he wants to use the paw’s third wish to reunite with his son Corey.

Suspecting that Jake might use the last wish to take Olivia back from Kevin, Cobb puts Kevin’s head in a machine press and kills him. Cobb also murders Jake’s cancer-stricken mother to unburden Jake of her medical bills. Realizing that his family is in danger, Jake convinces his brother Charlie and Charlie’s wife Sandy to leave town temporarily.

Jake visits Gillespie and Gillespie admits the awful truth about the paw’s curse. Cobb later kills Gillespie before going after Charlie and Sandy. Detective Margolis, who had been investigating the murders, comes to believe Cobb is the killer. However, Cobb kills Margolis as the detective tries taking Olivia to safety.

Jake finally retrieves the paw and confronts Cobb outside Abby’s home as Cobb holds Olivia hostage. Jake uses the third wish to ask for Cobb’s soul to return. Cobb stabs Olivia before having an emotional breakdown and committing suicide with Jake’s gun.

Injured in the struggle with Cobb, Jake is taken away by ambulance while frantically asking about the paw’s whereabouts. Later, as Abby and Corey drive away from their home, the paw is seen in the boy’s hand.

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Review:

“Classic” is a word sometimes misused in confusion as a synonym for “old” without necessarily referring to quality.  W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” is one short story that does qualify as a legitimately venerable classic.  Not because grade schoolers still find it in their English textbooks more than 100 years after it was first published, but because its theme about the danger of tampering with fate is as meaningful in the 21st century as it was in 1902.

Chiller Films’ “The Monkey’s Paw” from director Brett Simmons and screenwriter Macon Blair is the right kind of adaptation because it does more than transpose plot beats to be a straight film version of the familiar narrative.  Their movie taps directly into the inner spirit of what makes the paw’s story a timeless tale by adapting the message, not simply the text.

“The Monkey’s Paw” can even be treated as a follow-up since the entire Jacobs version is recapped as part of the backstory for how the talisman fell into its current owner’s hands.  The movie’s creators are not out to reinvent anything with this take.  Theirs is a tight tale aiming for horror entertainment with a visually cinematic feel, yet without the generic genetics of made-for-cable thriller fare.

The setting could have been wherever was cheapest to film and left as incidental to the onscreen action.  Spicing up the scenery is a Creole flavor genuinely making the most of its Louisiana location.  A pivotal road obstacle is a slow-moving gator instead of the usual oncoming truck.  A bar illuminates with the neon glow of an Abita beer sign.  And what visit to the bayou would be complete without a cemetery rendezvous surrounded by the region’s signature aboveground vaults?  Corbin Bleu even does his best impression of Fenster from “The Usual Suspects” by mumbling in a Cajun accent so thick he practically spits gumbo.

One more atypical detail in the film’s favor is a terrific relationship between the two primary players and how it is established.  In a tiny character naming hat tip to the original story’s author, C.J. Thomason plays a man named Jake and Stephen Lang is Cobb.

They aren’t similarly aged drinking buddies with a standard history of being longtime best buds.  Cobb is clearly a “work friend,” someone with whom a friendship is based mostly on a circumstance of being in the same room with the guy for 40 hours a week.  A simultaneous camaraderie and distance exists between the older Cobb and the younger Jake.  They can share a couple of beers after work, but Cobb is unlikely to be the best man at Jake’s wedding.  This finely blended push-pull to Cobb’s personality makes him sympathetic for his troubles, yet despicable for his actions.

Stephen Lang’s performance is exceptional.  Playing an everyman forklift operator, his is a role affording him the opportunity to show how much personality he can create for a character that could have been an empty vessel for delivering slasher mayhem.

“The Monkey’s Paw” packs a dense amount of exposition into its opening scenes with natural personal interactions and a brief subplot that quickly introduces everyone’s history and how they relate to one another.  Even with a fully loaded 88 minutes, the dialogue and structure still gives everyone a chance to bring “The Monkey’s Paw” to life without characters and scenes colliding over a fight for screen time.  There is a lot of story here, possibly too much as evidenced by a police investigation B plot that adds little aside from the welcome presence of Charles S. Dutton in a small part.

Indeed, the tone hiccups at times.  A scene involving Cobb’s confrontation with a drunk street reveler is funny, but the played for laughs moment has a hard time fitting in with the serious stakes permeating everything else.  The film also comes close to throwing Lang’s performance away when his character devolves too much into a barking zombie by story’s end.

Rock steady acting from the entire cast keeps the plates spinning constantly though, and the characters usually find a way to pull the movie back from a cliffside chasm of complete mediocrity.  “The Monkey’s Paw” ticks every box on its To Do list of offering simple chills and suitable charms with a well-produced interpretation of a classic story fitting finely into a Friday night of horror entertainment.

Review Score:  75

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