Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but horror… that right there’s a pretty great genre for exploring trauma. It’s a truism that Longlegs writer/director Osgood Perkins elevates with equal measures of nuance and brute force in The Monkey: an explosive, delightfully gory adaptation of the Stephen King short story of the same name. As a film, The Monkey shares much in common with its dastardly namesake: it’s got a wonderful, creepy design that belies complex mechanics working many levels beneath the surface. (Is it any wonder this was produced by James Wan, a man who’s introduced us to a number of spooky puppets and playthings?) A premise as deceptively simple as “if you wind up the monkey, someone brutally dies” leaves a lot of room for error, or for the gnarly kills to be the only things anyone remembers. But from that setup, Perkins builds a multifaceted rollercoaster of a midnight movie that elicits as many laughs as shocks or gross-out gags, and succeeds at both animating and skewering the power that death holds over us all.

One of the hallmarks of King’s horror, and why it’s so rich and resonant for so many people, is how he juxtaposes dark subject matter with wholesome iconography. The dynamic invites examination of how (and how often) darkness and light coexist in everyday life. Perkins has an uncommonly strong grasp on this blend, which acts as The Monkey’s North Star. Tone is a hard thing to nail down in any genre, but for horror-comedies especially, failing to create and maintain a strong voice that serves both genres can be lethal. Perkins honors King’s work by keeping the humor and the carnage shoulder to shoulder for the entirety of The Monkey’s ripping 98 minutes.

It’s a tightrope he walks from the very beginning: The opening scene quickly demonstrates the threat at hand by way of a straight-faced airline pilot played by one of Hollywood’s most reliable straight men, Adam Scott. The prologue begins with genuine tension as the captain insists that the monkey’s evil should be taken seriously. Soon enough, someone’s been killed by a harpoon and Scott is screaming into the night while doing fiery battle with the monkey – and my jaw was on the floor. This sequence introduces The Monkey’s bizarre, loose energy before the title even hits the screen.

When the monkey resurfaces in 1990s New England, the thin veil between life and death has become the driving force in the lives of the pilot’s twin sons, Hal and Bill Shelburn. Hal’s sensitive and quiet, Bill’s a bully who really owns the fact that he’s two minutes older than his brother. They’re not exactly close, but both share a deep love for their vivacious mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany). Maslany leaves a strong impression in the role: Lois’ laid-back, frank outlook on life (and death) gives the boys a common framework for understanding the calamity brought about by the toy monkey they inherited from dear old dad. But it’s not enough to keep them in each others’ lives as they grow up and the torch of the dual role passes from Christian Convery to The Gentlemen’s Theo James.

The movie stumbles just a little through this transition: Neither Shelburn sibling is an especially deep character, with each serving more as a stand-in for different ways of relating to death, but James provides Hal and Bill with a real vulnerability that kept me invested in their quest to get that dang monkey to stop killing people. Hal’s difficulty opening up to people and strained relationship with his son Petey (Colin O’Brien) shoulder The Monkey’s more gentle embrace of death and its costs, leaving the more anarchic and crunchy observations to Bill. Bill is by far the more showy of the two roles, and the source of James’ most entertaining scenes. Perkins supports the character’s deadpan paranoia and arrested development with a Superman-inspired costume choice that’s still making me laugh. It’s an on-the-nose touch to remind both the character and the audience of just how damaging it can be to lose multiple loved ones to the whims of a cursed miniature percussionist.

The Monkey’s centerpiece kills – heralded by calliope music that works like the Jaws theme and the metronomic click of the toy’s drumbeat – are frequent, goopy, and constantly entertaining. Perkins wisely doesn’t bog The Monkey down with much lore about the monkey’s origins or its bloodlust, instead letting its deeds speak for themselves. All this graphic mayhem gives the filmmaker ample opportunity to paint his sets with viscera and send body parts flying to all corners of the screen. But Perkins also demonstrates an excellent command of tone throughout these gruesome deaths, and they aren’t all punchlines: While some of the kills are played squarely for laughs, a few are truly wrenching and effective reminders of the human stakes of the story. The deaths are usually so violent that they’re over in a flash, which not only keeps The Monkey humming along but also reinforces its central notion that life is fragile. You never know when a hibachi knife is going to fly through the air and end it all for you.

Perkins keeps the fun going between these creative kills by populating The Monkey with a bevy of colorful side characters who keep the movie’s absurdist tone at the forefront. Ricky the town burnout, a roving gang of girls who bully young Hal, and a bafflingly stoner-coded priest all get standout moments. There’s even a full cheerleading squad that celebrates a coroner taking a corpse out of a house. The kooks on the periphery of the Shelburns’ story all have unique voices that appropriately pose the question “What Stephen King book did you walk out of?” It was Skeleton Crew, by the way – you’ll recognize the grinning little stinker on the cover.