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The Monkey movie review: Only blood and splatter in this gruesome film

Name: The Monkey
Released: 2025-03-07T15:28:44+05:30

The Monkey movie review: Death and blood is the entire story of a film that ranges between lame comedy and gory gratuitousness.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

The Monkey movie review: The film is directed by Osgood Perkins.

After Longlegs last year, Osgood or Oz Perkins returns with another film where blood and splatter are the entire story — the sentence, comma, full stop, colon (often literally) and, should you be so inclined, laughs. Death is everywhere, and everything is an accident. That is the basic premise of this film adapted from a short Stephen King story. Perkins, who has done the screenplay, takes that and spins it into a film — thankfully short — where death is a joke. And the more gruesome it is, the better.

The figure behind the killing spree is a grotesque toy monkey (you know the kind), with a giant snarl, a drum, and a key at the back. Once it is turned and the monkey starts beating the drums, someone in the general vicinity dies — though there is no telling who and how. That could have been a source of tension, but Perkins just wants to rush through the bodies.

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The monkey comes to haunt the family of twin brothers Hal and Bill (Convery playing both as a child, James as an adult) when they find it among the things left behind by their father, who one day went out for a smoke and never came back. Realising its potential for menace, the boys try to get rid of it, but somehow it pops back and keeps popping back. Among those who die brutally are the boys’ babysitter and mom (a pretty good Muslany even in the precious little time she has on screen). And the death list is still being added to when we meet Hal 25 years later, now estranged from his bullying brother Bill and barely managing to keep the custody of his sullen son Petey (O’Brien).

The Monkey movie trailer:

Perkins, so it is argued, is somewhat of an authority on the freakishness of death, having lost his father Anthony Perkins (the Norman Bates of Psycho) to AIDS, and his mother to 9/11 (she was on one of the planes). That doesn’t explain either the lame comedy or the gory gratuitousness of The Monkey.

It doesn’t explain the presence either of Elijah Wood in a blink-and-you-miss-it scene. He plays Petey’s stepfather Ted, who is a successful writer of parenting books, earning him a mansion, and who will sit you down and grasp your hands to sense your energy. Won’t this parable of marauding monkeys and missing dads just love to chew up Ted next? Could that be the sequel?

The Monkey movie cast: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Elijah Wood
The Monkey movie director: Osgood Perkins
The Monkey movie rating: 1.5 stars

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