Osgood Perkins drums up some monkey business.
There’s a certain kind of horror that slinks under your skin, the slow-creeping kind that director Osgood Perkins has made his signature. Then there’s The Monkey, which gleefully grabs you with grisly guignol and refuses to let go, trading in Perkins’ usual slow-burn dread for something nastier, funnier, and undeniably more chaotic.
Based on Stephen King’s short story, The Monkey takes a seemingly innocent childhood (but let’s face it – undeniably creepy) relic and turns it into an engine of relentless, malicious destruction. The film follows twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn (played in adulthood by Theo James and in childhood by Sweet Tooth‘s Christian Convery), who stumble upon their old wind-up toy monkey while sorting through their late father’s belongings. Trouble is, every time the monkey beats its drum, someone dies in increasingly grisly fashion. What starts as nostalgic curiosity quickly spirals into something much worse as the death toll mounts and the Monkey’s malevolence creates a rift between the young brothers, a rift that, despite separating them, keeps their lives inextricably tied to the wind-up toy.
Perkins’ approach to King’s short story here is a departure from his usual atmospheric slow-burn horror, leaning into something pulpier, meaner, and at times, unexpectedly, deliberately funny. The deaths are creative and gruesome, executed with a morbid sense of humour that calls to mind the Final Destination franchise – except instead of Death’s unseen hand, it’s the downward swing of the sinister simian stickman that acts as the harbinger of a messy end. The film thrives on its tension between the ridiculous and the horrific, with Perkins keeping the audience in a perpetual state of unease: is it okay to laugh? Should we? And just when you do, the film snaps back into something terrifying. If The Monkey has a flaw, it’s that just as the carnage reaches its ultimate crescendo, the film suddenly switches from “show” to “tell” and we suddenly find ourselves on the outside of the town being ravaged by the monkey’s murderous machinations.
Theo James does solid work as the tormented Hal, trying to piece together the mystery behind the monkey while Bill takes a more secluded role and Christian Convery is superb as both young brothers as they come to terms with their unwanted inheritance. Adam Scott, as their father in the prologue, adds weight to the film’s underlying themes of generational trauma – because of course, the monkey isn’t just a monkey. It’s a metaphor. A malevolent, drum-beating metaphor that happens to leave a body count in its wake.
What makes The Monkey work isn’t just its gruesome set-pieces or its dark humour – it’s the way Perkins manages to make the horror feel personal. This isn’t just a cursed object film; it’s a story about guilt, inherited pain, and the inescapable nature of family legacies. It’s also a story about a demonic wind-up toy that absolutely refuses to be ignored or discarded and Perkins has fun with both aspects of the story. There’s a palpable sense that in exploring the cruel absurdity of abrupt, accidental deaths Osgood is getting a personal monkey off his own back.
The Monkey cements itself as one of the better King adaptations of recent years – less traditional horror, more a wickedly fun descent into supernatural madness. It’s nasty, it’s playful, and if you happen to have any old childhood toys lurking in the attic, it’s enough to convince you to leave them well enough alone.
