Returning to Down Town: Was Henry Selick’s Bizarre Dark Comedy ‘Monkeybone’ Really That Bad?

The mainstream film industry seems like it’s finally ready to accept that animation can also be used to tell adult-oriented stories, but there are still very few animators that specialize in creating hand-crafted frights. In fact, most of the popular spooky animated films out there were actually directed by the same legendary filmmaker – the insanely talented Henry Selick.

However, after making it big in the ’90s with The Nightmare Before Christmas (as well as the less successful but still entertaining James and the Giant Peach), Selick decided that it was time to try his luck with live-action storytelling, a decision that led to the infamous 2001 flop Monkeybone. However, despite the film’s reputation as a nearly incomprehensible mess, today I’d like to discuss how this oddball production might still appeal to modern-day horror fans.

Before Monkeybone there was Kaja Blackley’s Dark Town. An indie comic-book about a man who gets into a car accident and wakes up in a nightmarish land ruled by puppets, this critical darling miraculously reached Hollywood through a dedicated fan despite Kaja only ever releasing a single issue that ended on a cliffhanger. Once Selick received a copy of the comic through one of his producers, the director began securing funding for what he thought was going to be one of his most personal projects yet.

Unfortunately, the higher-ups were unsure if Selick’s talents would translate well to a live-action environment and began meddling in the production. That’s how a film that was originally meant to be an exceedingly dark and faithful recreation of the source material was slowly transformed into a crowd-pleasing blockbuster more akin to a poor man’s The Mask. The studio even wrenched control away from Selick during the editing phase, removing crucial pieces of worldbuilding and character development in order to streamline the experience.

In the “finished” film, which was released with little marketing buzz in February of 2001, Brendan Fraser stars as Stu, a weary cartoonist who finally achieved success by producing an animated series about his most personal creation, the mischievous Monkeybone (voiced by John Turturro). After getting into a car accident, Stu enters a coma and awakens in Down Town – a carnivalesque afterlife populated by nightmares, gods and figments of the waking world’s imagination. Once there, our hero reluctantly partners with Monkeybone himself and embarks on a twisted quest to return to his body before his estranged sister literally “pulls the plug.”

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Even two decades later, Monkeybone is still remembered as one of Hollywood’s most infamous failures, with the film raking in less than $8 million on a $75 million budget and displeasing mainstream critics. Selick himself actually disowns the movie, claiming that the story that made it onto cinema screens back in 2001 wasn’t the story he initially set out to tell. He even says that the experience was so bad that it made him swear off live-action filmmaking for good.

And yet, the film that did make it into theaters was still a madly creative romp that juggled low-brow humor with the occasional flash of cinematic brilliance. If you look at each scene individually, this hybrid production features some legitimately impressive visuals, boasting chaotic character designs and effects (like strangely disproportionate monsters and even Giancarlo Esposito’s demonic take on Hypnos) that still hold up today.

In fact, the stylish production design only really falters during scenes taking place in the real world – which makes sense when you remember that these were likely much easier for producers to mess with. Thankfully, Brendan Fraser does his best to make even these moments entertaining (or at the very least interesting), especially when Monkeybone takes over Stu’s body and we get to see Fraser act like an uncomfortably horny version of George of the Jungle.

And speaking of Fraser, the film also somehow features one of the best comedic ensembles of the early 2000s, with Selick managing to recruit heavy hitters like Whoopie Goldberg, Thomas Haden Church, Chris Kattan, and even Bob Odenkirk (as well as the previously mentioned Esposito) in small yet memorable roles that add even more character to a film that’s already oozing with personality.

It may not make a ton of sense, but Monkeybone is far from a bad movie – it’s just an incomplete one.

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Despite the dark source material that explores concepts like mortality and the eerie side of imagination, Monkeybone is still technically a family picture (though you’d be forgiven for forgetting that due to the bizarre amount of sexual innuendo on display here). However, it’s always difficult for genre veterans completely avoid horrific elements in non-horror projects, and that’s why I still recommend Selick’s film for horror fans with a taste for the strange.

After all, the main plot ultimately revolves around the god of dreams wanting to flood the world with nightmares, and there are more creepy monster designs here than in most popular creature features. There’s also no shortage of stories about young children who left theaters traumatized after the “silly monkey movie” turned out to be a dark comedy filled with demons, grim reapers and a slight amount of body horror.

Hell, one of the highlights of the flick is a chase scene involving doctors attempting to recover organs from a re-animated corpse! There’s also a memorable sequence where Stu runs into fellow haunted storytellers who were betrayed by their creations, with everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King (who was played by a body-double due to scheduling issues) being kept in a metaphysical prison.

We may never know for sure if the original version of Monkeybone was truly a superior film (I’ll personally never give up hope on a possible director’s cut), but even if this chaotic quilt of a final cut is all we get, there’s enough creativity here to make it worth trudging through nonsensical editing and uneven humor in order to get to the good bits.

I mean, what other kid’s film claims that the dog from Cujo is currently residing in Stephen King’s body?

There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.