The Monkey Review: Seriously Un-Serious
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
After twins Hal and Bill find a creepy wind-up monkey toy while looking through their father’s stuff, people close to them start dying in crazy-gruesome ways. Whenever somebody winds the monkey, it raises its hands to play the drums, and someone dies. The brothers eventually realize the monkey is evil and get rid of the hairy abomination to end its carnage. Twenty-five years later, when the brothers are older and completely estranged, they learn the monkey is somehow back and killing people once again.
Based on a short story by Stephen King, the 2025 movie version of ‘The Monkey’ is a wicked, slowburn, dark horror comedy, which follows the dysfunctional relationship between its twin protagonists, bloodily complicated by the satanic monkey. Christian Convery (‘Sweet Tooth’, ‘Cocaine Bear’) plays the young versions of Hal and Bil, while Theo James (‘The Gentlemen’, ‘The White Lotus’) takes on the older versions.
Director Osgood Perkins and team deliver some ridiculously gory deaths in the film, some of which are hilariously gross and evidently fake, but it adds to the dark, exaggerated, comedic tone of the story. The first 30 minutes of ‘The Monkey’ is pretty solid, narrated from Hal’s POV (point of view), who tells the viewer how twin Bill bullies him incessantly. And the tragic happenings around the brothers only drive them further apart.
After having no contact with each other for almost a decade, Bill calls Hal, informing him about their aunt’s “freak death” and how the monkey is likely back in action (murdering people), so he must find it before it kills anyone else in the family. Hal is a divorced dad who gets to see his son Petey (Colin O’Brien) only once a year, so he reluctantly drives back to his childhood home to find the devious toy and ensure his son’s safety. “Don’t call it a toy!” I can almost hear the characters scream at me. Once the father and son visit the town where the twins grew up, multiple freaky deaths suggest the demon monkey is indeed at work.
The pace gets challenging and tediously slow at times; however, just before you might nod off, someone explodes into bloody bits. Those with a weak heart may be freaked out by the over-the-top violence, others who enjoy it might be thrilled. Also, despite the macabre nature of the killings, quite a few of them are low-key hilarious. There’s no rhyme and reason to the monkey’s actions, it’s pure murderous mischief wrapped in a box.
Overall, The Monkey is a horror flick that, despite being set between the 1990s and 2010s, exists in its own retro-nostalgic timeline. If you liked the trailer, you’re likely to enjoy the film too.
Rating: 6.5 on 10. Watch ‘The Monkey’ on Prime Video.
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