Warning: This review contains spoilers

(REVIEW) It was a really weird piece of marketing. Independent film distributor Neon announced in a news release that their new gory horror comedy film “The Monkey” would be available to screen in theaters and churches “simultaneously.” When you went to the website (where one could apply for a church screening), visitors were greeted by a text written like a church bulletin — but with obviously not church-friendly material:

“Praise be the Lord for having given us this gift from the Movie Gods; and to Osgood Perkins for filling our hearts with this gift on God's green earth.” “The Monkey has been worshipped by critics as: "ABSOLUTELY F–D UP" "SOME SICK S—-" "SMOTHERED IN AN AVALANCHE OF GORE" "ULTRA-VICIOUS." “In 100 words or less, tell us why your congregation should be blessed to witness the gift of ‘The Monkey.’”

This was a cheeky trolling move meant to have a few laughs and generate headlines. Even so, if you’d only seen the trailers, all this might still seem odd. There was little indication that the film was particularly focused on religion (aside from the appearance of a minister as a brief joke). Why zero in on churches for this stunt?

But it all makes sense after watching the movie. The movie is a self-consciously existentialist story that directly challenges the Christian worldview with mocking glee. This makes it great for understanding and unpacking existentialism as a philosophy.

“The Monkey,” based on the 1980 short story by Stephen King and directed by Osgood Perkins (director of “Longlegs”), tells the story of twin brothers, Hal and Will Shelburn (played by Christian Convery as children) who inherit a toy monkey from their father that ends up causing deaths that tears their family apart. Twenty-five years later, the twins (played by Theo James as adults) find the monkey is still causing trouble — and have to stop it once and for all to protect Hal’s estranged son.

The film lives up to everything you expect from a gory dark comedy horror. The deaths the titular monkey causes are as vividly disgusting and creative as anything I’ve seen and the movie does a great job of making them humorous — from the awkward silences, the over-the-top nature of them and the abrupt edits. The film also does a really good job of making you care about the characters and how they respond to all of the trauma from the deaths they’ve gone through. Both Convery and James are empathetic and hilarious as the younger and older versions of the brothers.

It’s understandable that writer-director Osgood Perkins would resonate with this story, given both of parents died in tragic and unbelievable ways (his father died from an AIDS-related illness and his mother was a passenger on one of the planes involved in the 9/11 terror attacks). In an interview, he told Variety: “I think that if I had written this movie when I was 29, it would have been pretty sad. But now that I’m 51, it’s a pretty funny movie. Time changes everything, it breaks it all down like a silt in a riverbed. If I was going to give a movie about death to an audience, I wasn’t going to hand them a bummer — I was going to hand a delight, an opportunity to shake it off and have a smile.”

The way the movie brings this delight is by giving an existentialist perspective on death. “The Monkey” is an existentialist fable. It’s actually a really good summary of existentialism, such that if f I wanted to show someone a movie to help them understand existentialism — assuming tolerance for blood and guts — it would be this movie. 

Existentialism starts with the premise of nihilism: There is no meaning in the universe except for what we impose on it. As a result, existentialism answers the question,“what do we do about that?” You create whatever meaning you like within reality’s constraints, that we were born for no reason and that we die for no reason. For existentialist Albert Camus, this meant choosing to enjoy life despite the fact that it’s meaningless or “absurd.” This is one reason why so many of the most nihilist/existentialist movies and TV shows over the past decade have been dark comedies like “Bojack Horseman,” “Rick and Morty” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

This ethos is all over “The Monkey” — from the way every death (even the ones we care about) are played for laughs to the story itself. When the characters discover the monkey can kill people, they start trying to figure out how it works, to discover its rules so they can play the game and win. But the monkey doesn’t have rules. The characters who cause the suffering in this movie are the ones who try to impose order and meaning on these meaningless death. And it’s when characters accept death and its pointless randomness that the carnage stops and reconciliation occurs. It’s when Hal embraces his mom’s words that “nothing happens for a reason, or everything happens for a reason, which is the same thing. Everyone dies. And that’s life. So let’s go dancing.”

Not surprisingly, the movie overtly sets itself up against Christianity, which it mocks and rejects for claiming it has answers about life, death and a loving God with a plan and power over death. The priest at every funeral Will and Hal attend as kids gives an awkward eulogy affirming God’s control, but he doesn’t seem very convinced by his own words. One lady talks about a loved one who would always respond to a mass tragedy by saying, “God is bowling strikes tonight!”

But the movie is also an example of why many people reject existentialism. It relies on having a callus view of human life that’s not very livable. Like Camus’ absurdism, you have to act like life is meaningful even if it’s not. You can’t be happy without stable relationships in an interconnected community united around shared values.

But you can’t have those things if you treat the lives of those other people as disposable. If you’re going to treat people’s deaths as funny, it has to be people outside your tribe. But that “We matter; they don’t” tribalism is one of the primary sources of the worst atrocities in human history. As Tom Holland points out in “Dominion,” it was Christianity that innovated the idea that life was intrinsically valuable. That’s why Christians rescued babies left in garbage cans to die by their parents; they believed these babies were objectively (not subjectively) meaningful. 

In both “Longlegs” and “The Monkey” the only all-powerful characters are satanic figures who kill at will in the face of an uncaring universe and an impotent God. The existentialists and Perkins advise us to comfort ourselves with the reality that it’s true while finding happiness by acting like it’s not. While this may work for some, it hardly seems less of a coping mechanism than the faiths that it mocks. And it requires a lot more mental hopscotch.

“The Monkey” is now playing in theaters.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.