THE MONKEY (2025)

Studio:   Neon
Director: Osgood Perkins
Writer:   Osgood Perkins
Producer: James Wan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Dave Caplan, Chris Ferguson
Stars:    Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Elijah Wood, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Osgood Perkins, Adam Scott

Review Score:

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Summary:

A cursed monkey toy haunts the lives of twin brothers whose family members die in a harrowing series of gruesome accidents.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Splashed in blood, airplane pilot Captain Petey Shelburn rushes into a pawn shop insistent on turning in a wind-up organ grinder monkey. Captain Shelburn warns the pawn shop owner that the monkey is not a children’s toy, and that terrible things happen whenever it plays its drum. The monkey suddenly plays a song, after which a series of events triggers that results in the pawn shop owner being speared by a harpoon. Captain Shelburn takes the toy outside where he tries torching it with a flamethrower.

In 1999, Captain Shelburn’s sons, twin brothers Hal and Bill, find the monkey and its wind-up key in a box among their missing father’s belongings. Bill, who regularly bullies his meeker brother Hal, winds the toy, but it doesn’t yet bang its drum.

Hal and Bill’s mother Lois sends the boys to a teppanyaki restaurant with their babysitter Annie Wilkes. During dinner, the monkey plays its drum in the backseat of Annie’s car. Shortly thereafter, a hibachi chef accidentally decapitates Annie with a sharp knife while preparing food and performing.

Hal comes home humiliated after Bill leads a group of girls in bullying him at school. Already suspecting the monkey may be supernatural, Hal winds it while wishing for his brother’s death. At the same time, Bill witnesses Lois’s death from a sudden aneurysm. Convinced the monkey is cursed, Hal hacks it into pieces and dumps the parts in the garbage.

Hal and Bill’s Uncle Chip and Aunt Ida become the boys’ guardians and move the brothers to the small township of Casco, Maine. Inexplicably intact again, the monkey mysteriously reappears. To test if the toy can actually kill people, Bill winds it, which results in Uncle Chip being trampled to death by horses during a camping trip. Knowing it can’t be destroyed, the brothers chain the monkey in its box and drop it down a well in hopes of ridding themselves of its curse.

25 years later, Aunt Ida dies in a gruesome accident following a series of freak mishaps. On behalf of Bill, a local burnout named Ricky acquires the monkey from Aunt Ida’s estate sale.

Hal, who intentionally estranged himself from all family members, including Bill, so as not to put anyone in danger, visits his ex-wife so he can spend time with his teenage son Petey, which he only does once a year on the boy’s birthday. Hal and Petey are both distressed to learn his ex-wife’s new husband, successful parenting advice author Ted Hammerman, plans to formally adopt Petey, and the couple no longer wishes for Hal to spend any further time at all with his son.

Bill calls Hal to tell him about Aunt Ida’s strange death. Bill asks Hal to go to Ida’s house to see if the monkey is there. While on the phone with his brother, Hal witnesses a woman explode from electrocution upon diving into a pool at the motel where he is staying with his son.

Real estate agent Barbara greets Hal when he arrives at Aunt Ida’s home. Barbara mentions Bill, which surprises Petey since his father previously lied about not having a brother. While going through the house, Barbara reveals other neighbors have died peculiar deaths following Ida’s funeral. In an upstairs closet, a shotgun falls, killing Barbara in front of Hal.

On a hunch, Hal calls an odd phonebook listing for “Mrs. Monkey” and hears a recorded message in his brother’s voice. Bill reveals that after he deduced his mother died because Hal wound the monkey, he went into the well to retrieve the toy so he could use it to kill Hal as revenge for Lois’s death. Finding only the key, Bill waited for the monkey’s inevitable return, which came after Aunt Ida’s demise. Ever since getting the monkey back from Ricky, Bill has been winding it with the hope of killing Hal, but only random people have died instead.

Over the phone, Hal demands that his brother stop turning the monkey’s key to prevent any more innocent deaths. Bill warns he will keep winding the monkey until Hal dies. However, based on his theory that the monkey won’t kill whoever winds it, Bill offers for Petey to turn the key instead, keeping Hal’s son safe while continuing Bill’s quest for retribution.

Determined to take back the monkey he handed over to Bill, Ricky disguises himself as a police officer to take Hal and Petey hostage at gunpoint. Ricky forces Hal to drive to Bill’s trap-laden home where he has Petey sneak inside to steal the monkey.

Petey confronts his uncle in the act of pleading with the inanimate object. Bill instructs Petey to wind the monkey, which Petey does. In the car outside, Ricky fires his gun wildly as he is suddenly killed by a swarm of wasps.

Incensed that Hal still hasn’t died, Bill forcibly grabs the monkey from Petey and demands that it kill his brother. The monkey continues drumming, but only causes numerous deaths across town as a plane falls out of the sky and a newlywed bride drops through a hole in the roof to become hanged on a cable.

Hal finally confronts Bill. Bill explains that he figured out Hal tried using the monkey to kill him when they were kids, but Hal inadvertently killed their mother instead, triggering Bill’s desire for revenge. Accepting blame for the tragedy, Hal apologizes to Bill as the two brothers reconcile. After they shake hands, however, the monkey triggers a trap that decapitates Bill.

Committed to being the monkey’s new keepers, Hal and Petey drive away with it through the devastated town as freak accidents continue killing residents. After seeing a supernatural vision of the fabled Pale Horseman, Hal proposes he and Petey go dancing, which is something Lois did with her sons following Annie’s funeral.

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Review:

No other adaptation has intentionally played a Stephen King story for laughs quite like “The Monkey” does. “Creepshow” (review here) comes close, though that anthology organically inherited some four-color cartoonishness from its EC Comics inspirations. “The Monkey” has a heavier hand of gallows humor in how it presents classic King carnage, often imitating an absurdist fantasy.

In calling “The Monkey” a “horror-comedy,” we still have to differentiate it from the scary movie spoofs and slapstick splatter that term commonly calls to mind. The film doesn’t feature any bug-eyed kooks or Austin Powers antics. It’s sly, not outrageously silly. “The Monkey” mainly uses its macabre sense of humor and creatively edited gags to dump impossibly gruesome goop onto Rube Goldberg domino lines that always end in gory, and occasionally goofy, deaths.

The first one comes only four minutes into the runtime. You know you’ve wandered into peculiar cinematic territory as soon as Adam Scott, sporting a bloodied airline pilot’s uniform that makes him look a little like Cap’n Crunch, struts into a pawn shop, which rivals Curious Goods for the amount of oddities adorning the shelves, following a credits sequence accompanied by a song from a 1979 Indian crime film. As should be expected of writer/director Osgood Perkins even at this earlyish stage of his career, this is a filmmaker who creates his own templates out of uneven pieces to give his movies unique textures, and “The Monkey” is no different than “Longlegs” (review here) in that regard.

An already weird intro gets weirder when Scott’s character, Captain Shelburn, plunks down a wind-up organ grinder monkey on the counter. He’s quick to insist it’s “not a toy,” although it is a terror capable of killing someone once it’s done drumming a little ditty. The pawn shop owner gets firsthand proof of this claim when a mischievous mouse chews on a rope, launching a medieval weapon into a vintage diving suit whose harpoon suddenly spears the man in his stomach. Not quite finished, the monkey bangs out one final beat, retracting the harpoon to pull the pawn shop owner’s entrails across the room with it.

In 1999, Captain Shelburn goes missing, leaving his twin sons Hal and Bill to find the monkey among belongings left with their mother Lois. During this first third of the film, young actor Christian Convery earns “The Monkey’s” unsung hero award for his dual role as Hal, the bespectacled nerd, and bullying brother Bill, who humiliates Hal every chance he gets. They’re polar opposites as personalities, and Convery pulls off each one so convincingly and so differently, it’s easy to forget the same person plays both parts.

Naturally, the boys are curious about the contraption, so it isn’t long before they wind the key and bodies begin piling up. However, it only takes three deaths in the family for Hal and Bill to conclude the monkey is cursed, so they toss it down a deep well with the hope it will never haunt them again.

It takes 25 years, but of course the monkey comes back. By then, Hal is not only estranged from Bill, but from his teenage son Petey, whom he avoids out of fear for accidentally inviting the curse to continue obliterating his bloodline. The monkey’s return starts a new string of “Final Destination”-like “freak accidents,” including a burning woman running headfirst into a wooden post that impales her skull, a lawnmower mutilation that rains brains on a beer-drinking neighbor, and a swimming pool electrocution that explodes a diver’s body. “The Monkey” cheerily and cheekily revels in this brand of B-movie schlock, though it always does so with hyper-stylized shocks.

If there’s any issue to be had with the movie’s horror-humor hybridization, it’s that the film can feel too slight, as though “The Monkey” could be credibly accused of being too flippant about comedic chaos. In addition to Adam Scott, Elijah Wood shows up as another notable name who only appears for a single scene. Osgood Perkins himself also pops in looking like an anachronistic Elvis as Hal and Bill’s swinger uncle, while Tatiana Maslany has such a relatively small amount of screen time, it’s curious for her to be billed so high. These quirky cameos can create an air of actors “having a laugh,” which some viewers might see as the movie dumbing itself down due to the lighter touches.

Anyone who’s not a good sport about “The Monkey’s” tone runs the risk of getting angry at clouds. I can just imagine some Stephen King obsessives losing their minds over how the movie winks at a particular novel by giving a character with a familiar name a far different fate than the one they receive canonically.

For those poorer sports, I’d merely remind them “The Monkey” is based on a short story, so it shouldn’t be wolfed down the same way as a grander King work such as “The Stand,” “The Shining,” or even “Pet Sematary” (review here). “The Monkey” would be better digested as a smaller, yet no less flavorful bite of menacing mirth fitted for a casual fright night on the couch, exactly like everyone involved designed it to be.

Review Score: 75

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