2025 ‧ Horror Comedy‧ 98m
Less than a year after Longlegs, Osgood Perkins returns with another horrific delight. Based off the Stephen King story, The Monkey, is about a twin boy who discovers the titular toy in a closet of his absent father’s belongings. “Turn the key and see what happens” it says.
Death is what happens. Bizarre Rube Goldberg-esque death
After a quick tone setting cold open with the aforementioned father, grown up Hal (played by Theo James) tells the story of how he and his twin Bill dealt with the monkey when they were children in 1999. When they find it, Bill turns the key and the monkey starts to act like it is going to bang its drums but then it seems to be stuck. Convinced it is broken, they put the monkey aside and go to a restaurant with their babysitter Annie. Almost telepathically, Hal hears the monkey’s drum and Annie suddenly meets a gory and bizarre death. When you turn the key, someone will die. In an unusual manner. Hal figures this out and turns the key again with a specific person in mind, but regrets the decision after what happens. The two boys place the monkey in a dry well, hoping it will leave them be. 25 years later though, it seems the monkey is back and a grown-up Hal must face it again, this time along with his own son.
The Monkey is without a doubt Oz Perkins’ funniest film. Longlegs was not humorless, but laughs were certainly not a main priority. Perkins strikes the difficult tone of horror and comedy early on and basically sustains it through the runtime. The laughs are often in the edit, and that is quite masterful. Theo James in the dual roles of the grown-up twins Hal and Bill is quite good, though he seems more comfortable in the Hal role. His younger counterpart, Christian Convery, plays both young twins and might be the most impressive performance of the movie.
King fans will be pleased that this is a faithful enough adaptation. On the spectrum of King movies, this is perhaps slightly more faithful than Kubricks The Shining but less than its sequel Doctor Sleep. The original story is fairly slight, so Perkins does well in building upon the story’s ideas. In that sense, things might be a little padded. There are characters that could be excised, but then the body count would not be as high and then so would the laughs. The elaborate systems that lead to someone’s demise are in many was the star here. Fans impatient for the next Final Destination film will find a lot to like here.
Viewers familiar with Perkins’ family and events will be tempted to read into the themes of the film along those lines, and there might be something there. This is also the second film in a 3-picture deal after Longlegs and before Keeper. Though not much is known yet about Keeper, the trailer at the end of The Monkey suggests it will be heavy like his other films. Perhaps Perkins just needed to have a little fun before going back into the dark depths.
The Monkey is a gory pitch-black comedy best seen with an audience. The kills and laughs are quite crowd-pleasing. The film may not be especially ambitious, but it knows what it is and does it pretty well. It would make a great Midnight Movie.
Grade: B-
~Andrew
Click HERE for Andrew’s Longlegs review.