Movies decades apart, and one atmospheric (The Fog) and the other dark comedy gory horror (The Monkey), but both holding tight to what makes Horror so distinctly human: the past shall not stay buried just because it’s dead or destroyed. Murmurs echo the sins of our past in our present. A fog can spark revenge, a monkey can spur a curse, an element of Mother Nature can bring ghouls, and a toy can silence those it deems worthy. Ghosts rise both in the mist and on the shelf. Each tells the same message, though – things must be answered for…it just depends on who or what is delivering the consequences.
The Fog (1980)
John Carpenter’s The Fog is a story about a lie, simple as that – an atmospheric ghost story centered on a small town celebrating its present and suppressing its past. It’s a town founded on stolen gold. I’ll leave it at that. Oh, and you guessed it, when the fog comes, so do the ghosts from which the gold was stolen.
Synopsis from Kanopy: According to legend, six sailors killed when shipwrecked 100 years ago in Antonio Bay, California, will rise to avenge their deaths when a strange glowing fog appears. The town is commemorating the centenary of the shipwreck and Father Malone discovers a diary kept by an ancestor; he learns that the ship was wrecked by six founding fathers of the town. The vengeance of their victims will be the death of six people.
Just as he did in Halloween, John Carpenter gives meaning to terror and shows that when a haunting comes to town, not even the innocent and unaware are safe. Ghosts and goblins have no rules, but we understand why in The Fog, and that’s important.
The horror builds through the realism of learning about the characters, experiencing the world of a small seaside town, encountering a few crazies at the local pub, understanding its mom-and-pop shops and business practices, and even making you care about the old lady babysitter. You know the townsfolk are hiding something, but it’s made clear they feel they are doing it for the right reasons. That alone builds empathy, so when the fog approaches, we care for both the good and the bad guys. The morality is foggy (pun intended). The ghosts are purposeful and believe they are owed what was taken from them. This is vindicated punishment.
This movie reminds me that while the past coffers to the present, the essence of dirty deeds and wrongdoings seep up through the soil.
The Monkey (2025):
The Monkey is an adaptation of a short story by Stephen King, about a cursed family toy that won’t die. Twist its crank, and someone, other than the person holding it, will die. It makes no sense, and that’s where the dark humor comes into play – the Monkey takes who it wants, no rhyme or reason. There is no moral logic to it, but there is morality for us to learn.
Synopsis from Kanopy: In this darkly comic horror thriller directed by Osgood Perkins, twin brothers Hall and Bill wrestle with a cursed wind-up monkey toy whose drumming triggers shocking, grisly deaths around them. Decades after trying to bury their past, the brothers are forced to confront the malevolent today when a new wave of carnage sweeps through their Family. The Monkey is adapted from Stephen King’s 1980 Short story of the same name.
The Monkey showed me (albeit in a very, very gory and often shocking way) how mechanisms of our grief, trauma, and pain find ways of destroying us without ever explaining why. It’s up to me to not wind the key that tightens my strings and eventually makes the toy (my humanity) pop.
How much curiosity really does kill the cat? When does infatuation with revenge strip us of humanity? Is trauma enough to justify terror against others? Is unresolved and unchecked pain the destroyer of us?
Watch now on Kanopy: The Fog | The Monkey (Free with your library card)
Comment below your thoughts once you’ve had a watch.
Hit subscribe to get Hoboken Public Library Staff Picks to your email!
Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant
Hoboken Library Staff Picks 