‘The Monkey’ Effects Supervisor Talks Adam Scott’s Flame Thrower Obsession, the Brutal Pool Explosion and Osgood Perkins’ Visceral Brand of Filmmaking: It’s Like ‘Robert Zemeckis With a Little Drop of Acid’

Is dying funny?

Well, the short answer is no. But the long answer is it could be. Just ask visual effects supervisor Edward J. Douglas. While working on Osgood Perkins‘ latest horror romp, “The Monkey,” he was often told to crank up the humor on the film’s outrageously violent kills.

“We were reiterating constantly on different versions of these moments,” Douglas says. “And sometimes, we get notes back when we’re reviewing like, ‘It’s working. But how can we make this visual effect funnier?’ Which is something I’ve never gotten before.”

“The Monkey,” adapted from Stephen King’s short story of the same name, is a blood-soaked meditation on the flippant nature of life and death. The film follows Hal (Theo James) a reclusive stress case who desperately tries to reconnect with his teenage son while haunted by a wind-up monkey that incites a random (and ridiculous) death whenever the key in its back is turned.

If you’ve seen “The Monkey,” you may be surprised to learn that every death in the movie “starts practically” and is pulled over the finish line with special effects. According to Douglas, Perkins’ practical approach stems from a love of “’80s Amblin” titles like “Gremlins,” and a dedication to a personal aesthetic he describes as “Robert Zemeckis with a little drop of acid.”

Take the film’s opening scene for example. Hal’s estranged father, played by Adam Scott, introduces us to the horrors of the monkey when he brings the acursed toy into a pawnshop. After trying to convince the disgruntled clerk to take it off his hands, the monkey bangs its drum, causing a harpoon gun on display to impale the clerk and rip out his entrails.

The harpoon gun shot was entirely real. But to execute the kill, the effects team created “a dummy body wearing the wardrobe of the shopkeep,” which they skewered with the harpoon, and then pulled “30 feet” of prop intestines through it. Then, they matched the angle with the real actor and stitched the two shots together with VFX.

“We had to use a little bit of CG to connect the pieces together, just so everything perfectly lined up,” Douglas says. “But I would say 90% of everything in that sequence is elements of practical all glued together through VFX.”

In the following scene, Scott’s character tries to destroy the monkey with a flame thrower, another practical effect. Douglas recalls that once the “Severance” star got his hands on the weapon, he didn’t want to put it down.

“He was so excited to play with the flame thrower. He was giddy,” Douglas says. “We wrapped him out, it was time for him to go home, and he said, ‘Can I go take some more photos and videos with this flame thrower.’ [We said], ‘Absolutely, Adam Scott.'”

Further into the film, we see the demise of Hal’s Aunt Ida, who, by influence of the demonic primate, lights her head on fire while fiddling with a faulty gas stove and runs head first into a pointy For Sale sign outside of her home. Douglas was “really proud” of this sequence since it perfectly married practical filmmaking and VFX.

First, they shot a stunt person frantically running around as if their head was actually on fire. Then, a special effects technician took a prosthetic head “doused in igniter fluid” and walked it through the house, “matching the stunt performer’s moves.” The two elements were then stitched together, bringing the moment to life. When it came time to shoot the For Sale sign, they had a stunt performer run at it head first with the spike removed for safety, then Douglas added the killer effects in post production.

“Every piece of fire in that sequence is practical,” Douglas explains. “It’s this choreographed dance between stunts, special effects team, prosthetic makeup team, for the amazing burn makeup, plus visual effects.”

The most complex kill to produce came near the film’s halfway point. After Hal cranks up the air in his sweltering hotel room, he heads out to the pool to take a call with his estranged twin brother Bill (also played by James). Unbeknownst to Hal, his thermostat tinkering caused the AC unit to short circuit. It tumbles off the roof and lands in a puddle of water, electrifying the pool. Before an unsuspecting swimmer can notice, she dives into the water and immediately explodes into a bloody mist.

They started by filming the diver jump into the water like normal. Then, after calibrating their “blood cannon,” they wheeled it out on a green screen bridge positioned over the “exact point where [the swimmer was] gonna hit,” providing the “beautiful blood rain” that you see in the film. As an added touch, a special effects technician stood on the bridge in a greenscreen suit and threw prosthetic limbs into the air.

But even with the blood cannon and flying limbs, Douglas still needed to add more gore in post to achieve the “Disney fountain” level of blood demanded by Perkins. Douglas takes the absurdities in stride, however. After working on “Longlegs” and “The Monkey,” Douglas is more than acquainted with the director’s visceral style of filmmaking.

“That’s what it’s like working with Oz. When you’re on set with him, instead of calling cut, sometimes you’ll hear him giggling and laughing behind the monitor, which tells you, ‘Okay, I think they’ve nailed it,'” Douglas says. “I just think in visual effects reviews, when you show them something, might be no notes, just giant laughter. And then you know you’ve nailed something.”