The Monkey review

THE MONKEY: 

OSGOOD PERKINS HAS GONE BANANAS WITH THIS CHAOTICALLY FUN HORROR FLICK! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4

NEON

Everybody Dies and That’s Fucked Up in The Monkey

 

            Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel & Hansel, Longlegs) follows up last year’s stellar horror film, Longlegs with a movie about a possessed toy monkey that kills people every time it beats its drum in The Monkey. The film is produced by James Wan (Insidious franchise, The Conjuring Universe, Malignant) and based on the 1980 Stephen King short story of the same name. 

            I was looking forward to this movie when I first heard it was coming out, I loved Perkins’ Longlegs last year and hailed it as one of the best films I saw in 2024 and I was curious and excited to see what he’ll do next. The hype got even bigger when I saw the trailers for it which were completely batshit and seemed to have more of a darkly comical tone compared to the suspenseful and tense, Longlegs. 

            So, with much anticipation I sat down in the movie theater and watched Osgood’s latest film…this was a blast. I don’t think it’s as good as Longlegs, but this movie fires on all cylinders and fully embraces the sheer absurdity of its premise in only a 90-something-minute runtime. 

            The film follows twin brothers, Hal and Bill Shelburn (Both played by Theo James-Downton Abbey, Underworld 4 and 5, The Divergent Series; and Christian Convery-Sweet Tooth, Cocaine Bear, Frankenstein (2025) as them as children) who as kids discover an old wind-up, drum-playing monkey toy that belonged to their estranged father. However, it turns out this monkey is cursed and causes horrific deaths at random after it plays its drum and is constantly taunting the brothers for 25 years. 

            After a new killing spree caused by the monkey begins, Hal and Bill, now as adults must finally confront this very bad monkey in hopes of ending its madness. 

            The film also stars Tatiana Maslany (Flash of Genius, Destroyer, Keeper) as Hal and Bill’s mom Lois Shelburn, Colin O’Brien (The Mothership, Wonka, Dear Edward) as Hal’s son Petey, Rohan Campbell (Mech-X4, The Hardy Boys (2020), Halloween Ends) as Ricky, Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek) as Aunt Ida, Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation, Krampus, Severance) as Hal and Bill’s father Capt. Petey Shelburn, Laura Mennell (Trick ‘r Treat, Watchmen, Alphas) as Hal’s unnamed ex-wife, and Elijah Wood (The Faculty, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Cooties) as the ex-wife’s new husband Ted Hammerman. 

            Overall, The Monkey leans more into horror-comedy compared to Perkins’ previous directing efforts, but it guarantees a bloody good time at the movies that’s worth every drum beat. The movie goes very over-the-top and outlandish with its death scenes that are reminiscent of deaths you’d see in the Final Destination movies if they were caused by a demonic toy monkey and without any premonitions (Also, I am very disappointed in the movie theater I saw it at for not putting the Final Destination: Bloodlines trailer in front of this, it would have made perfect sense!). 

            Literally from the opening scene, it tells you exactly what sort of movie this will be just by the first kill and they get more absurd as it goes on. Some of them were teased in the trailers like a woman getting her head blasted with fire from a stovetop and a person about to dive into an electricity-infested swimming pool (and believe me, the payoffs for those are spectacular), but you also have a very bizarre death involving a giant wasp nest that’s easily the most creatively brutal kill in the whole film. 

            The movie finds humor in the worst parts of life and it’s done very naturally and get some good laughs, not just in terms of the over-the-top deaths. Whether it’s growing up in difficult environments, estranged family relationships, tragic events in your life, etc. the movie presents many of these like “Oh well, everyone dies” and many of the supporting characters’ reactions to these horrifying things happening are absolutely hilarious. 

            Theo James is great here as both brothers to the point where I often forgot they were “Two characters in a movie being played by the same actor” (Yes, I did just make a Sonic the Hedgehog 3 reference in a review for The Monkey). Whether as Hal trying to protect people from the monkey’s power or his brother, Bill who is kind of an asshole, James delivers two very funny and amusing performances that might be my favorite roles from him. 

            You can tell that it’s a Stephen King adaptation and I was also having fun acknowledging his tropes in the film like “Oh, there’s the group of Stephen King bullies” and “Oh, there’s Maine”. If you read a lot of Stephen King stories or watched any of the adaptations of his work, you do catch on to the clichés he likes to put in them and much like the recent film version of It, The Monkey uses the King tropes to its advantage. 

            Neon has put out movies that I thought were objectively better than this (I, Tonya, Parasite, Longlegs, etc.), but The Monkey is the most fun I’ve ever had watching one of their films and it’s probably the most mainstream movie the studio put out. With this and Heart Eyes, February 2025 truly is a glorious time for horror movie cinema with a twisted sense of humor and I cannot wait for Osgood Perkins’ Keeper later on this year. 

            Koopa from the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie approves of this horror film!