Review: The Monkey

Image courtesy of Neon.

Add Osgood Perkins' gory, death obsessed Stephen King adaptation "The Monkey" to the increasingly large pile of 2025 horror movies that featured elements I admired, even if the entire film didn't completely work for me. That list includes "Heart Eyes," "Companion," and "The Damned." Perkins' latest is more of a comedy (albeit a bloody one) than a straight-up horror movie and the only real suspense is who might survive.

"Everybody dies and that's life," one character in the film tells a young boy who has seen his share of trauma. And that pretty much is what "The Monkey" is about - that death is coming for all of us, and its timing is something beyond our control or comprehension, although most of us likely won't face the same gory deaths that the folks in this picture do.

Based on the King short story from the "Skeleton Crew" collection, "The Monkey" plays like a chapter of "Final Destination" by way of W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw," but the increasingly grotesque body count is played more for laughs at the outrageousness of it all.

At the film's beginning, a father (Adam Scott) tries to return the titular object - a stuffed monkey with a drum and sticks as well as a creepy dead-eyed stare - to a pawn shop, but fails. His two sons - twins Hal and Bill Shelburne (played by Christian Convery as children and Theo James as adults) - are cursed to discover the object's horrific power at an early age as it first claims their mother and then pretty much anyone else who crosses their path.

Some years later, Hal is intentionally estranged from Bill, who bullied his brother when they were younger, as well as from his son, Petey (Colin O'Brien), whom he fears would be in danger should he be in any proximity to his father. Although it has been years since the monkey wreaked havoc, the bodies start piling up again and there's a plot twist as to why.

And boy, do the bodies pile up. People fall victim to beheading, evisceration, impaling, shotgun blasts to various parts of the body, being stung to death by wasps, electrocution, aneurysm, and being trampled by horses. All of this would have been significantly more disturbing if most of these preposterous deaths weren't played for laughs.

Perkins is a talented director and much of this film's success is due to this. His "The Blackcoat's Daughter" was a menacing thriller and last year's "Longlegs" was one of the best serial killer films of recent memory. 

So, while "The Monkey" is an amusing take on life's random cruelty, it feels like a bit of a step down from the director's most recent film. You might be amused by the film's outlandishness and there's a little more to it thematically than your typical horror movie, but it feels like more of a lark when weighed against this director's more somber and unsettling body of work.