Director Osgood Perkins brings an element of fun to his horror film The Monkey — based on the Stephen King short story. The outrageous deaths allow for a bit of comedy in the sound, to emphasize the over-the-top nature of them. In contrast, the sound of the Monkey is less over-the-top evil and more like an everyday toy.

Here, Eugenio Battaglia (re-recording mixer/sound designer/ supervising sound editor) talks about his collaboration with Director Perkins and how this film compares to their work together on Longlegs. Battaglia talks about the sound work on the different death scenes, creating the sound of the Monkey, designing the sound of Hal’s dream scene, creating fun effects processing chains for “monkey madness,” and so much more!

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

THE MONKEY – Official Redband Trailer

You recently worked on Longlegs with Director Osgood Perkins. The Monkey was your second collaboration with him. How do the two projects compare? What were some of the initial ideas for sound in this film?

Sound supervisor/sound designer/re-recording mixer Eugenio Battaglia

Eugenio Battaglia (EB): The Monkey was such a different movie than Longlegs. In Longlegs, I wanted to give the whole movie a layer of subliminal sound design to give it that ominous and abstract feeling. Whereas in The Monkey, we needed to keep it a bit less subjective and think about the absurdity of the film.

One of the ideas Oz and I discussed while working on The Monkey was to not make the monkey sound overtly evil like some mystical villain but instead more real and raw to accentuate the theme of the film that death is common and part of existence like an everyday mundane object, like a toy. Other than that, the fact that when it starts working, terrible stuff happens and I think that gives it…