Everybody dies.

That's the message a mother relays to her twin boys in "The Monkey," director Osgood "Oz" Perkins' delightfully wicked and darkly comic horror thriller, which takes great joy in mocking the ritual of death. Perkins turns it into sport, a "Final Destination"-style symphony of fate's cruelty, and he's crafted a sicko comedy that has more fun the further it pushes the proverbial envelopes on gory gags and of good taste.

That wise mother is Lois Shelburn ("Orphan Black's" Tatiana Maslany), who is trying to protect her sons Hal (the sweet, shy one) and Bill (the bully) from tragedy. (Both brothers are played as children by Christian Convery.)

Their father disappeared, and a curse seems to hang over their family. That curse is possibly brought on by a mysterious toy monkey, which sports a frightening perma-grin on its mug and plays a wind-up drum that sits in its lap. When its stick comes down and taps that drum, you're best to not be around.

The boys learn early on that this monkey is bad news, an unforgiving instrument of murder, which is why they go to great lengths to rid it from their lives.

Yet years later, as grown adults — Theo James of "The White Lotus" and the "Divergent" movies plays the grown version of Hal and Bill — they're still under the monkey's spell. But in differing ways: Hal has isolated himself and is afraid to get close to anyone, out of fear the monkey's curse will in turn bring harm on them, while Bill has driven himself mad, and is attempting to harness the monkey's power to exact revenge on his brother. (There's no real rhyme or reason to the monkey's ways, other than he who turns the key seems to be safe from its wrath.)

But as Bill soon learns, the monkey doesn't take requests.

"The Monkey" is adapted from Stephen King's 1980 short story that was included in his 1985 collection, "Skeleton Crew." It's about the randomness of life (and death) and the mechanics of revenge, and Osgood — so good at creating and maintaining a mood of sustained, suffocating dread in movies like "The Blackcoat's Daughter" and last year's surprise hit "Longlegs" — lets loose here with a tone of playful malevolence, where on-screen deaths arrive in increasingly ridiculous displays of comic absurdity.

So while gore-soaked death scenes aren't in and of themselves funny, Osgood presents them as such, and the world he creates for his characters and the audience allows a real estate sign impaling a human head to become an expertly timed punchline to an elaborate joke. "The Monkey" is an outrageously funny vessel for shock humor, and if you're surprised or even disgusted by what you're laughing at, the laughter is the point. (Maybe the whole point, but the point nonetheless.)

Osgood gets game performances from a dialed-in cast. James shows himself to be a more loose and adventurous actor than he was allowed to be in previous roles, Maslany is spiky and acid-dipped, and a cameoing Adam Scott sets the right tone for what follows in a gleefully deranged opening sequence.

It all makes for a side-splitting mixture of humor and horror, an outrageous comedy caked in blood. Everybody dies in "The Monkey," but at least they die laughing.

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'THE MONKEY'

Grade: B+

MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violent content, gore, language throughout and some sexual references)

Running time: 1:38

How to watch: In theaters Feb. 21

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