When watching The Monkey by Osgood Perkins, your first reaction may be to turn from the film, with its over-the-top gore, bizarre dialogue, and campy tone. However, once this knee-jerk reaction has passed and your body gets accustomed to the insane logic and vibe of the film, The Monkey cements itself into the “Goofy Stephen King Adaptation”. To set it straight, this film is less The Shining and more Maximum Overdrive.
After their father’s sudden disappearance, twins Hal and Bill (both played by Christian Convery) discover a cursed organ grinder monkey that, when cranked, will painfully and creatively kill someone at random. The twins toss the monkey into a well to prevent further death and go about their lives. Many years later, Hal and Bill (both now played by Theo James) are reunited after a sleuth of surprise deaths begins to happen in their hometown. The Monkey has returned, but who is turning the crank?
This film is GOOFY. For starters, that second paragraph is all the important plot details you need. Second, The Monkey does not require further plot details because the rest of the film exists to harbor bizarre, Looney Tunes-inspired death sequences. Third, and this is the most important, the cast understands the assignment so much that even with the most bare bones of story, structure, and plot, they bring the house down.
Theo James runs wild as traumatic twins Hal and Bill. After realizing that the Monkey always targets someone close to the one who cranks the monkey (not a euphemism, but feels like one), Hal has become an anti-social loner, who refuses to build a real connection to anyone in his life, including his son Petey (Colin O’Brien). Hal’s ex-wife plans to take full custody of Petey but allows Hal and Petey to spend one last week together before the official ruling. The scenes with these two together really highlight James’ talent in portraying an extremely awkward and paranoid guy. On the opposite side of the trauma coin, Bill has gone insane from his horrific experiences with the monkey. His madness includes still owning his childhood suit from his mother’s funeral and sporting the WORST haircut of 2025 so far. The two performances are extremely memorable with James going full camp. Going equally hard is Tatiana Maslany who plays Hal and Bill’s mother Lois. She-Hulk herself is electric as a single mother with a hilariously dark outlook on life and death. The rest of the cast is littered with minor cameo performances that we dare not spoil.
Now, the main appeal of the film has to be its death scenes, which are as funny as they are gory. While the original story reflects guilt and the ever-present evil of the world, this adaptation veers off in a completely different direction by being a black comedy about how death is something everyone experiences and that sometimes people die in absurd ways. Think Final Destination, but instead of the carnage making your stomach turn, it makes you laugh at how ridiculous it can get. While watching, I was reminded of the web series Happy Tree Friends, an animated series where adorable cartoons suffer real-world injuries while engaging in Looney Tunes-style antics. It’s extremely gory, with a lot of blood and guts, and probably something I shouldn’t have been watching at 12 years old, which is exactly how I would explain The Monkey.
Osgood Perkins proves to be a master at creating and maintaining a distinct tone in his films. With his previous film Longlegs, Perkins crafts a dreadful story about an elusive and terrifying individual through the cinematography, editing, sound mixing, and direction of his performers. Perkins uses this mastery of tone to successfully zag from horror to comedy, keeping all the creative imagery, big character performances, and off-putting scenes, but showing them in a way that loosens you up instead of making you tense. This film really showcases the balancing act in directing horror, and how a few tweaks to a scene can make the tone go from traumatic to hysterical.
While not a traditional follow-up to one of the scariest films of the last 5 years, The Monkey is a wonderful horror-comedy zag that’s a ton of fun to watch. Perkins’ strong sense for tone, mixed with wonderful performances, and hilarious gore make for a wonderfully silly Stephen King adaptation that reminds you that “Everybody dies… And that’s life.”
3 out of 5 stars
But in a very entertaining way.
The Monkey is the 2025 adaptation of the short story by Stephan King directed by Osgood Perkins. After twins Hal and Bill discover a wind-up monkey with the ability to kill a random person after turning its crank, they bury the evil creation in hopes of preventing it from taking another life. Many years later, the cursed monkey returns and begins to kill again, and Hal must return to his hometown to find out who is causing the deaths. What follows is a comedically gory horror comedy which stars Theo James as both Hal and Bill, and co-stars Tatiana Maslany, Colin O’Brien, Christian Covery, Rohan Campbell, and other cameo performances. The film is distributed by Neon and was produced by Atomic Monster, Black Bear International, C2 Motion Picture Group, Range Media Partners, Stars Collective Films Entertainment Group, and The Safran Company. The Monkey releases on February 21st, 2025, please go check it out and go dancing afterward.
