Film Review: The Monkey

Welcome back to the blog readers. Horror has always been a point of contention for me, especially since I have been seeing an increasing number of them over the last few years. When I heard about this one though, I got excited because I thought that this could be a fun idea. But learning it was made by the same guy who made Longlegs (2024) (a film I was ultimately disappointed in) made me a bit hesitant in a way. Would I be able to shake off the noise and have a fun time with a killer toy monkey? Stick around to find out.

The Monkey was written and directed by Osgood Perkins, based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King. The film stars Theo James in a dual role, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery in a dual role, Colin O'Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott, and Elijah Wood. In the film, a set of twin brothers have their lives turned upside down when a cursed toy monkey emerges that causes random horrific deaths around them. When they get older, the monkey returns and they must venture to put an end to it once and for all.

I remember seeing the trailers for this film and actually being excited to see this film because the last horror film I saw that features a child's plaything (M3GAN (2023)) was absolutely awesome and is getting a sequel this year. With that being said, and being nervous about my experience with Longlegs, I actually thought this film was awesome. It is a wild thrill ride that had me squirming and gasping the entire time due to the shock value. Plus I love the dual role that Theo James and Christian Convery play and Perkins really knew how to put the comedy in comedy horror.

This is something I never do but I want to praise the performances of two people at the same time. Theo James and Christian Convery play the twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn. And I think the two of them play these two characters extremely well. I want to start with the meeker Hal. James and Convery are able to perfectly capture the meekness of this character from his youth to his adulthood, and it is clear that there is room for this character to grow. James in particular absolutely gets Hal like I have never seen. Now, we move on to the asshole Bill. We see more of Convery as this character and I think he does a better job with BIll than he does as Hal. The dick that Bill is is only exemplified by Convery's unwavering bullishness and commitment, but something that James comes off as is goofy in a way. It was goofy in a good way though.

There are two aspects of the film that I want to talk about, and I will talk about them separately and then bring them back together. The first thing I want to talk about is the comedy aspects of this film. This film from the get go was never meant to be taken seriously, and you can see that in the very first five minutes when someone is impaled by a harpoon gun and Adam Scott's character comically takes a blowtorch to the toy monkey. And it never lets up, with comical death after comical death, providing me with one of the funniest moments of the year when something happens and we immediately cut to a funeral, only for something to happen a few minutes later and they immediately cut to another funeral. Osgood Perkins shows in this film that he really understands how comical this story can be, and I really enjoyed myself with this aspect of the film.

The second aspect of the film I want to talk about is the horror aspect. While I do agree that this film is nowhere near as scary as Longlegs (which itself was more creepy than scary unlike what was advertised), there were some crazy moments in the film. When I talked about bringing the comedy and horror aspects together in the previous paragraph, this is what I was talking about. The real horror of this film is the absolute shock value that comes with these comical deaths because you never see it coming. Like when someone is trying to open a locked door and promptly is met by an errant shotgun that blows them up. Or the final shot of the film (which is equal parts shocking and hilarious) in which a group o cheerleaders leaning out the windows on the side of a bus get met by an errant truck that leaves them all dead in the middle of the intersection. If Perkins' next film Keeper (2025) is as shockingly funny as this, we may have the next best horror director.

In conclusion, The Monkey is a wildly entertaining time that perfectly blends gory horror and comedy in a way not seen since M3GAN. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.