New streaming on Screambox from Cineverse!
Directed by Aidan Leary.
Written by Aidan Leary, C.R. Thompson.
Check out the
trailer here!
Michael Gilio plays Jimbo, the host of a children’s show called Monkey’s Magic Merry-Go-Round. Jimbo is the sole human on this show. The rest are puppets. Jumbo feels that something is off lately on the Magic Merry-Go-Round and begins to have flashback to a tome when he wasn’t part of the kids show. Jimbo wants to know more, but Monkey and his puppet pals will do anything to keep reality buried in Jimbo’s psyche forever.
MONKEY’S MAGIC MERRY-GO-ROUND is a brilliant little descent into madness. It’s a concept that has been done before, specifically as short stories as seen in TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE and episodes of Shudder’s CREEPSHOW series and Nick Antacosta’s CHANNEL ZERO, where the lines between reality and a children’s cartoon are blurred as a detriment to the protagonist’s sanity. The film is also derived from MEET THE FEEBLES and other puppets gone monstrous films, most recently in THE FUZZIES, where innocent looking puppets do horrible, horrible things. But what sets MONKEY’S MAGIC MERRY-GO-ROUND apart from the herd is how cruel it is to its protagonist Jimbo and how batshit the puppets’ world really is.
Michael Gilio is great as Jimbo. He has a pleasant face, but beneath that forced smile is a man in torment, a message conveyed just through Jimbo’s exhausted eyes. He has this cold stare that, even though he is saying and doing innocent things like drawing a smiley face on his knee or checking the mailbox for letters, there is a darkness and loneliness just below the surface. Gillio is able to communicate all of this longing for a way out of Monkey’s world simply through a blank stare at the camera. That takes talent.
Things get dark. I mean really dark. Don’t be fooled by the childlike puppets. Blood flows and heinous acts are committed. I was surprised how filmmaker Aidan Leary is able to fracture what looks to be an ideal world into a million disturbing pieces through uncomfortable closeups, frantic edits of violence set against a seemingly innocent backdrop, and alternating sounds of mania and silence.
I loved this little movie that creatively and effectively shreds sanity to ribbons. The pacing might lag a bit in the third act, but by then I was fully invested in Jimbo’s fate. MONKEY’S MAGIC MERRY-GO-ROUND isn’t for the kids. But if you’re entertained by the non-stop mania of Adult Swim’s programming, then you’re the type of big kid that’ll love to be warped by this one.
