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Osgood Perkins' "The Monkey" isn't a horror movie really -- it's not scary enough. And try as it might, it doesn't really succeed as a comedy, either -- it's not funny enough. What we have here is a sort of slasher-tribute movie that never commits to the fright-flick gross-out esthetic from which it seeks to mine laughs. Writer-director Perkins, who had a horror hit with last year's Nicolas Cage feature "Longlegs," is clearly at home in the grindhouse terror dome, but he doesn't have the exuberance of such throat-ripping luminaries as Eli Roth or Ari Aster or, Lord knows, Quentin Tarantino. He may be one of those rare humans who's just too nice.

The movie is an adaptation of a serviceable 1980 short story by Stephen King. It begins in 1999, as we encounter a blood-spattered man (Adam Scott doing somebody a favor) blustering into a pawn shop, carrying a mechanical monkey. "I need you to take this off my hands," he tells the pawn shop owner. "Make it somebody else's problem." We see that the monkey is holding a snare drum and a pair of sticks with which to beat it; the man emphasizes that the monkey must never be allowed to do this. Quicker than you can say "oops," though, the monkey does, and in a flash of bloody evisceration, the shop owner's innards are suddenly whipped out of his body through a hole in his gut before schlupping back in again.

The scene has the shape of a gag, but it's not quite grody enough, and thus not quite enough of a surprise. Think back to "Thanksgiving," the fake trailer Roth created for Tarantino's 2007 movie "Grindhouse." You'll recall the shot in which we see a teenage cheerleader bouncing up and down on a trampoline and then a hand with a large knife suddenly thrusting up below her. If exploitation satire is what you're aiming for, this is how far you have to go to create it. "The Monkey" never does this.

This problem continues as the picture moves along. The focus is on two twin brothers, Hal and Bill (played as children by Christian Convery and as grownups by Theo James, of the "Divergent" movies). We meet them as kids pawing through some clutter in their late father's closet, which is where they first come across the mechanical monkey. As their lives progress, we meet their mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), who likes to enlighten them about life's most distressing possibilities ("You might die screaming through duct tape," she says). A genial babysitter named Annie (Danica Dreyer) loses her head while flirting with a knife-wielding chef in a Benihana-style Japanese restaurant. And the boys' Uncle Chip (played by Perkins himself, wearing sideburns the size of mittens) is trampled to death by a herd of wild horses (leaving behind a mess that, as one character observes, looks like somebody dropped a cherry pie).

You might walk away from this movie wishing you liked it more than you do. It has some appealing performers (especially James, who gives a droll dual performance), and a couple of amusing moments, too. Which aren't enough.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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