Rent Spanking the Monkey (1994)

Spanks for the Memories - Spanking the Monkey review by griggs

Sometimes second chances pay dividends. Having dismissed David O. Russell after a lukewarm encounter with Silver Linings Playbook, going back to his debut felt like unfinished business — and what deeply uncomfortable business it turns out to be.

Spanking the Monkey is textbook indie filmmaking with classical bones: escalating tension, a protagonist pinned by circumstance, and subject matter no studio would greenlight on a dare. A pre-med student returns home to care for his immobilised mother; what follows goes somewhere deliberately, disturbingly wrong.

Russell directs with startling confidence for a first feature — unflinching without being exploitative, darkly funny without trivialising the damage. Jeremy Davies carries the film’s impossible weight with quiet, brittle precision.

Sundance audiences voted it their favourite in 1994. Took me thirty years longer to find it, but I got there.