“The Monkey” (2025) Review

There’s only so many times you can show people dying that horror turns into a farce. From the creative slashing of A Nightmare on Elm Street to the Rube-Goldberg-style traps of Final Destination, the volume of violence only grows as much as the goofiness mounted on top of the gore. Director Osgood Perkins plunges face-first into this realm of horror for adapting Stephen King’s The Monkey. Although reducing the trauma and destructive fears of the id might make this a lesser adaptation, the abundance of the absurd helps keep this film more fun, if not frightening.

This tinkering seems necessary for crafting a story around a creepy cymbal-playing monkey. With its teeth-filled smile and terrifying eyes, the supernatural toy activates random deaths upon being activated. It can’t be destroyed, and it doesn’t take requests. This gruesome trial and error is observed by twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn, both played by Christian Convery. They turn the key on the monkey’s back, the creepy circus music plays as the monkey drums away, and a grizzly death follows. This includes such over-the-top displays of heads being cut off and guts being torn out in ways so darkly brutal you have to laugh. The hilarity isn’t unintentional either, as Perkins skillfully edits for laughs with mortality most manic.

Even when the film has a timeskip to age up the brothers, being played by Theo James, the comedy doesn’t stop. Although Hal lives a somber life of solitude and struggles to connect with his son (Colin O’Brien), his life is still filled with such ridiculous figures. This includes his ex-wife’s new husband, played with scene-stealing allure by Elijah Wood, and Hal’s vaping boss whose stoned catchphrase to every situation is “that sucks.” Hal makes for a great straight man amid these wild characters, although he has his moments of laughable reactions to the danger and violence. There’s a certain bravery for a film like this to have Theo James angrily shout the hurried line, “MAKE LIKE A EGG AND SCRAMBLE!” He’s sufficient for placing some grounded concern in a film where the aged up Bill pretty much turns into a comic book villain for his obsession with the mortality monkey.

This movie has been primarily marketed about how it’s too violent for certain TV spots to meet approval and, to the film’s credit, it’s not a bait and switch. There are some grotesque moments of people being cut, gutted, and turned into hamburger meat in a variety of situations that would make the Final Destination movies blush. There are even some solid setups with the deaths, as when Hal’s son brings up skydiving weddings and that themed kill arriving at the most unexpected moment. Your mileage may very on how well these kills stack up for their frequent attempts at humor, especially since there are so many one-scene characters not worth caring about in terms of whether or not they are ground into comedic fodder. This includes the aforementioned Elijah Wood and the natural anxiety-laced hilarity of Adam Scott as the father of Hal and Bill. Scott doesn’t do much in this movie, but if you like watching him scream as he wields a flamethrower in a pilot’s uniform, his appetite for scenery chewing might be enough to satiate.

The Monkey works best as a goofy-ass, tongue-in-cheek gore fest and mostly hits that giddy mark with its odd aim. The trade-off seems appropriate for diverging so heavily from the darker aspects of the short story. After all, there’s only so long you can take the creepy face of the monkey seriously before the bit gets old and the fright wears off. Perkins anticipates that staleness with an overload of absurd violence but also a warranted laugh for approaching such dark topics. Aspects of trauma and existential dread are present, but the focus on coming to terms with mortality can only go so far before acceptance leads to contentment. A world where whether you live or die depends on a monkey toy is silly, but sometimes life is weird that way and demands a snicker to carry on another day. Where other films merely stew in the dread of our limited existence, Perkins’s film is a kooky coping response.