The Monkey is a 2025 horror dark comedy directed by Osgood Perkins and starring Theo James, based on a Stephen King short story. The film follows a set of twins (who are both played by James) and their late father’s wind-up toy monkey, which when wound up, causes a gruesome and elaborate death of a random person within its vicinity. In its opening weekend, the film grossed over 14 million dollars, making it distributor Neon their second most successful opening, only being beaten by Perkins’ previous film Longlegs, which came out in the summer of 2024.
Longlegs, while similarly an excessively violent horror movie, was played completely straight, trading out The Monkey’s crude comedy with disturbing themes and occult imagery. The Monkey comes as a complete tonal shift, while still allowing Perkins to work in a genre he’s familiar with. That being said, this new direction is not one I’m particularly a huge fan of.
My main criticism with Longlegs was that it was all style and no substance. The Monkey takes that sentiment and wears it as a badge of honor. While Longlegs made genuine attempts to explore ideas of religion, gender roles and parental indoctrination, The Monkey’s main thesis can easily be summarized as: Death sucks and there’s nothing we can do about it, oh well. It’s an idea that isn’t inherently uninteresting, yet is ruined by being sloppily thrown into a comedic exploitation film about a killer toy monkey. It’s as if Perkins finished filming all of the extremely bloody deaths of countless innocent people before realizing his film required a theme, throwing in a few dialogue exchanges explaining the inevitability of death as a formality.
Underneath all of the bloody deaths, you’ll also find a story about a father and son. Our main character Hal is a deadbeat dad who works as a cashier for a stoner boss who’s leagues younger than him. It’s all very, very pathetic. To add insult to injury, Hal’s wife is remarried to a multimillionaire bestselling parental advice author, who’s adopting Hal’s son Petey and forcing him to sever ties with his father for good, allowing one last weekend for them to say their goodbyes. If this sounds like a nonsensical and unrealistic ultimatum to you, then you’d be right.
As you’d expect, the father and son spend their last days together getting wrapped up in the killer toy monkey plot, where any attempt at a story or character development gets thrown out the window. The lack of any real growth and progression is almost laughable, with our father and son duo being pushed along by meaningless event after meaningless event, with no real destination in mind. But remember, it doesn’t matter, we’re just here for the kills.
If The Monkey’s marketing didn’t already make it clear, this is not a serious movie in the slightest, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s a time and a place for everything, and a fun horror comedy is sometimes what you want to watch. But when judging the merit of a film which trivializes violence to this degree, you need to take into consideration how entertaining the violence is. Sure, it’s a morbid concept to say aloud, but when the main selling point in your advertisements is how gory the film is, it better live up to its expectations.
It’s safe to say The Monkey is an extremely bloody horror flick with many, many grotesque mousetrap-style deaths akin to the Final Destination series. The effects, while not especially impressive, are solid for a small budget film, and do a good enough job portraying the cartoony scenarios on screen. That being said, in a movie filled with dismemberment, exploding heads and wild animal attacks, the most disturbing aspect of the film isn’t the violence itself, but rather the lack of suffering shown on screen.
The violence being presented to you is so over the top and in bad taste, you never stop and think about the pain, nor does Perkins want you to. Because of this, the deaths often feel hollow, lacking the weight required to make the audience feel something. This criticism is not exclusive to The Monkey and can be said about a lot of similar films. However, the main difference between The Monkey and those other films is that…The Monkey is boring.
The Monkey follows a simple formula. Once the toy gets wound up, we know as the audience someone is going to die. It’s never shocking. Even worse, the setups leading up to all the deaths are made extremely obvious, eliminating any sense of tension or suspense. A chef is tossing around a knife, there’s a harpoon gun hanging on the wall, that air conditioner on the roof is missing a few screws; what will ever happen next? It’s never a surprise, nor is it trying to be. If you watch movies with the sole purpose of seeing lifeless caricatures of people gruesomely bite the dust, then sure, you’ll love The Monkey. You’ll also love a plethora of other films who do it better as there’s not a whole lot that stands out in The Monkey apart from its pure absurdity.
Due to all the deaths being indirect, as well as a lack of explanation or backstory, the titular monkey itself doesn’t work well as an iconic horror mascot the same way killers like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger have in the past. Furthermore, the comedy, while having a few good moments, hardly works either. With the jokes being juvenile at best, and snarky at worst, it’s almost as if the film is making fun of you for wasting your time watching it. All these elements, coupled with the story being practically nonexistent, make it so there’s not much left to like.
On a technical level, The Monkey is a competently made film. The lighting and camera work are solid, and admittedly the editing is a stand out element of the film, with a few surprising creative choices. But even talented people working behind the scenes can’t save this mess of a script.
It’s a shame. While not perfect, Longlegs was a breath of fresh air in the horror genre, proving that Perkins can at least make something unique. Perkins has shown a lot of promise, yet sadly The Monkey felt like a giant step backwards for him. It’s evident that many people like his movies, as both of his major releases have been very financially successful, making it a safe assumption that we will be seeing a lot more of Perkins in the future. Having stated multiple times that he plans to stick to the horror genre, as well as write all his own movies, my only hope is that Perkins continues to progress as a filmmaker with more interesting, thematic, and scary stories, instead of regressing into making schlocky slasher comedies.
Final Score:
