Osgood Perkins gives a fine tweak to Stephen King’s original short, but the unending spate of brutal deaths is a bit too hard to digest, perhaps even for this Generation X.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️ (2 / 5)
By Mayur Lookhar
“It’s not a toy, never call it a toy”. “Everybody dies, and that’s life, or “Everybody dies, and that’s fucked up.”
More than catchphrases, these words act as a warning — a neo-disclaimer of the things to expect when you dive into the world of Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey (2025). The fine marketing, even in India, will drill this into your psyche to the extent that one might be amused by the grotesque and all that is “fucked up” in this film. Therein lies the promise of a horror comedy — except that the gruesome gore here is simply not funny.
A human body (played by Osgood) is brutally reduced to mincemeat by trampling horses. A woman’s body is horrifically shredded into pieces as she dives into an electrified swimming pool. A retracting harpoon rips out a man’s intestine. A broker’s face is brutally disfigured by a gunshot, with the woman’s bloody finger landing in the protagonist’s mouth. Despite sensing a gas leak, an elderly woman places her nose over an open burner, only to have her face engulfed in flames. She runs wildly and smashes her head into a wooden stake.
Make no mistake, each of these gruesome deaths is sadistically captured by Nico Aguilar. However, if this is intended to create dark humor, this reviewer is not amused in the slightest.
What’s causing these outrageous deaths? Blame it on a snare drum-beating toy monkey. Oops, we’re not supposed to call it a toy. It’s so scary that forget a child, but no sane adult would want it.
The film opens with the visual of a bloodied man, played by Adam Scott, wearing a captain’s hat as he attempts to sell a cursed monkey at a toy store. He warns the store manager that the blood isn’t his and cautions him not to start the key. Unconvinced, the store manager winds the key, and the monkey begins playing the snare drum. Moments later, a retracting harpoon rips out the manager’s intestine. Scott’s character sets the store and the monkey ablaze, and we never see him again. The man’s identity and the time period are not explicitly explained, but a discerning viewer is likely to deduce them later in the film.
Based on Stephen King’s 1980 acclaimed short story of the same name, writer-director Osgood Perkins gives an interesting twist to the original by basing his film around twins Hal and Bill Shelburn (both played by Theo James). Their father vanished one day and locked the monkey in the attic. King’s cymbal-beating monkey gives way to a snare-drumming monkey in Perkins’ adaptation.
In 1999, a curious boy (Christian Convery), Bill, unboxes the toy monkey from his missing father’s attic. Bill and Hal have no clue what trouble this cursed monkey will bring.
The first tragedy sees the bizarre death of their gorgeous babysitter, Annie (Danica Dreyer), who has her head sliced off at the dinner table. Bill was fascinated by her, and the boy later reveals that he would have gone on to marry her. One wouldn’t blame the kid for crushing on Dreyer. This doesn’t shake the twins much, but once their mother dies in a mysterious fashion, the boys are convinced that it is the cursed monkey that has set off a chain of brutal deaths. And this continues to torment Hal 25 years later, threatening even his son, Petey Shelburn Jr. (Colin O’Brien).
Stephen King’s short is considered a cult classic; in fact, an official adaptation of the story was produced under the terms of King’s Dollar Baby contract. The hour-long short film, written and directed by filmmaker Spencer Sherry and shot in New York, premiered in May 2023. In 1984, King’s short inspired filmmaker Kenneth J. Berton to make The Devil’s Gift. If one digs further into history, then perhaps King’s haunting toy monkey will trigger nostalgia for The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), a short penned by American novelist Edgar Allan Poe.
Perkins wisely adds a twist with the twin brothers’ plot, but whether it’s King’s original or Perkins’ adaptation, it’s never revealed why or who cursed this toy monkey. Is it delivered straight from hell? A backstory to the haunting, preferably an ancient one, would generate fear and curiosity, but there is none here. The nature of King’s story is such that he deemed it fit for a short. Perkins makes a few tweaks, but the spate of grotesque deaths just makes this whole experience feel like a loop.
So, what objective does The Monkey serve? Cult, niche—these are fine words, but no sane person is likely to cheer the endless brutal deaths. Perkins goes a step further by having cheerleaders dancing to some of these gruesome scenes. Well, in the end, they too die in bizarre fashion.
What does one take away from this film? The gore might only cater to sadists, but Perkins’ film explores the subtle themes of depression, childhood trauma, and psychological fear. The stark contrast in how Hal and Bill deal with their trauma reflects their behavior and personalities. It’s here that Theo James shines, skillfully emoting the different shades of his twin characters.
Perkins’ leading cast is more than competent, with Tatiana Maslany particularly flawless as Hal and Bill’s mother, Lois. It’s the mother who casually instills the idea that you, me, everyone will die one day. Clearly, the mother too has had her own demons, and perhaps dangerous trysts with the monkey. Well, ma’am, true that everyone will die, but not in the manner as the unfortunate, innocent souls in this film.
Longlegs (2023), Perkins’ last release, had its flaws, but it featured a frightening titular character, a more engaging narrative, and, more importantly, much less gore. With The Monkey, Perkins veers much more to the gross side than it caters to desi palates. The key irony here though is that if the one who winds the key lives, then how come our store manager met a deadly fate in the beginning.
Each time your reviewer comes across such gore, we wonder how American filmmakers have, for years, instilled a grotesque horror and crime culture in their society. The frequent school/college shootings naturally raise a debate over this gun culture, which is often glorified through cinematic arts.
We do acknowledge the Generation X cult that’s marketed rather well, making these screenings in India an eventful experience, but the big question remains: do they truly succeed in leaving a lasting legacy?
Distributed by Impact Films, The Monkey is set to release in Indian theaters on 7 March.
