It is rather unfortunate that, of all the years in the past decade in which Oz Perkin’s The Monkey could have been released to cinemas, it was released in the one year with a Final Destination sequel. Both films trade in absurd – and absurdly gory – death scenes, and it is a sorry fact that Perkin’s film is simply outclassed in how it showcases and delivers that kind of bloody mayhem. It is also unfortunate to be one of four Stephen King adaptations in the same year, and unless Edgar Wright’s The Running Man remake turns out to be particularly ordinary then The Monkey is going to emerge in fourth place. To call this a bad film feels harsh, but I cannot in good conscience describe it as good either.

The film follows Hal and Bill Shelburn (Theo James), twin brothers who inherit a cursed mechanical monkey. If it is wound up, and beats on its drum, somebody nearby dies in a brutal and improbable fashion. Years after discarding the monkey down a well, the now-adult brothers are brought back together when people starting dying again.

An elongated 30-minute prologue benefits from the presence of Tatiana Maslany as the boys’ mother, but is also crippled by a ponderous voiceover that is as unnecessary as it is dry. It wastes an enormous amount of potential in that first half-hour, stretching the narrative and boring the viewer. It also develops a strong sense of artificiality that makes identifying with the characters all the more difficult. By the time events shift from the 1990s to the present-day – all of which seems costumed and decorated like the 1970s – there are not really any likeable characters left.

Theo James does a decent job in his dual lead role, but he struggles with a screenplay that simply ties one hand behind his back at all times. He is cursed by not simply being hard to like, but by being unnecessarily passive as well. Other characters are either blandly drawn, or simply hardly appear in the film at all.

The core appeal of the film should be the vast array of unexpected and horrifying deaths that occur whenever the titular monkey strikes. Unfortunately they are paced rather poorly; when Final Destination enacts one of its absurd Rube-Goldberg murders, it carefully ratchets up the tension step by step and maximizes the inappropriate humour of the situation. The Monkey rushes things, and seems to inevitably conclude in some sort of CGI-generated explosion. The comic timing is wildly off, and the repetitive nature of the violence does it no favours.

To the film’s credit, its creepy mechanical monkey looks fantastic; sadly it’s rare for production design to save a film. It certainly doesn’t save anything here.

Stephen King’s original short story is brief but also serious, and did have potential to generate an effective horror feature. Perkins goes for a comedic approach, and while that might have had potential as well he fails in the execution. Deeply ordinary films like this simply are not worth your time.