The Monkey is gruesome and relentless in its violence. It's also a very personal story for writer-director Osgood Perkins.

The film follows twin brothers who are stalked throughout their lives by a wind-up toy monkey they find as teens that brutally kills their loved ones. It's based on a 1980 Stephen King short story that Perkins was approached about adapting.

Perkins told Yahoo Entertainment that when he was thinking about how the murderous toy operates, he realized it's not "like Chucky or Megan" running up and stabbing people -- it's a "godlike totem of death" that randomly and supernaturally sets freak accidents into motion.

"Having lived a life with a fair amount of unexpected tragedy in it, I found that I'm an expert on that -- the fact that sometimes stuff just goes really crazy and you lose somebody, then you get some distance from that and life goes on," he said. "Then, you can surrender to the fact that maybe the thing to do in the face of death is just smile a bit."

Theo James stars in a dual role as the twins -- one of which is a character Perkins loosely based on himself -- in a later timeline when the monkey reappears in their lives.

James told Yahoo Entertainment that he found the script to be "a bombastic, fun, wild ride," though still "strangely touching."

"Oz shared some of his own personal imagery and stories with me," he said. "I think that is the strength of the film. All those [onscreen deaths] are fun, as a piece of entertainment should be. But beneath that is an undercurrent of reality -- of sadness, of love -- which is quite endearing."

Tatiana Maslany plays the mom of the family that the monkey terrorizes. The character is based on Perkins's mother.

"I watched some interviews with Oz's mom -- she's really an incredible woman and has an amazing way of speaking and sense of humor. There were parts of that I played with," she told Yahoo Entertainment. "But the character description [that Perkins provided] just said 'cool.' So I had to be like, 'What does Oz think is cool?'"

Maslany's character's early, over-the-top death traumatizes the young twins, shaping who they are in the future. "Everybody dies," she says flatly during the funeral for the family babysitter, whose hibachi-related passing the twins witness. It's true -- nearly everyone in the film dies in a horrifically creative way.

Perkins told Yahoo Entertainment that he took inspiration for those scenes from "Wile E. Coyote and Itchy and Scratchy, mostly."

"Wile E. Coyote, in a Road Runner cartoon -- that poor guy gets burned up, cut up, buried by mountains and put through the wringer, right? And he always just comes back for more," he said. "There was a notion that these deaths would be absolutely unreal. None of them can actually happen in the way that they happened. It's always playful and cartoonish."

Perkins's personal favorite death scene, which is included in the film's viral (and controversially gory) trailer, happens after a woman is electrocuted as she dives into a pool.

"Audiences seemed to really squeal at that one," he said with a laugh.

Rohan Campbell plays a local who falls victim to the monkey's rampage. He told Yahoo Entertainment that his death scene was the "best part" of his role in the film and is one of the few not alluded to in trailers. No spoilers, but it involves bees.

He said that the day they filmed it, Perkins "sat beside the window giggling to himself" about it.

"I want people to feel leaving the theater like they watched the wrong Looney Tunes VHS," Campbell said. "I want people to go, 'That was a great family movie where really horrible things happened.'"

Sarah Levy plays an aunt who takes custody of the twins after their mom dies. Her over-the-top death involving an oven has drawn comparisons to Final Destination.

"It was truly a bucket list experience for me. A scene like that was something I had only hoped I would be able to do as an actor at some point in my career," she said. "I feel like every actor wants one great death scene."