One of the best things about Osgood Perkins (also credited as Oz Perkins) as a director is that his filmography possesses immense depth. From a young adult folksy fairytale, satan coming home to a boarding school, or an FBI thriller with an insidious twist, and even a good old haunting. With The Monkey (2025), Perkins adds a killer toy to the list.

On the edge of young adult and just a good adult splatterfest, The Monkey is adapted for the screen by Oz Perkins, based on the short story by Stephen King of the same name. And with legendary producer James Wan (The Conjuring, Saw) and Chris Ferguson (Child’s Play), who is no stranger to killer toys himself, the latest NEON horror film ends up as a timeless fable for how life’s randomness also connects to death and not just good luck.

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The Monkey stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, and Elijah Wood. When twin brothers Hal (Christian Convery) and Bill (Convery) find a mysterious wind-up monkey, accidents enter their lives like a waterfall. Raised by their single mother (Tatiana Maslany), the only thing left of their pilot father (Adam Scott) is his weird toy monkey.

Held in a Tiffany Blue hatbox, the monkey has a simple directive, and the boys follow it. They turn the key and see what happens to the people around them as a wind-up organ monkey becomes a harbinger of outrageous deaths for those around them. Funeral after funeral, the monkey’s chaotic streak doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason outside the fact that the boys live through it all.

Oz Perkins’ second movie in two years, The Monkey (2025) puts humor first.

Scared by the power or feeling guilting depending on which brother is talking, they try to abandon the murderous toy. Twenty-five years later, the monkey begins a new killing spree, forcing the estranged brothers to confront the cursed toy. With Bill (Theo James) still obsessed with the past and Hal (James) trying his best to keep his teenage son Petey (Colin O’Brien) safe, the two have very different ways of solving their problem.

When creating a thrill, Perkins is a fantastic comedian, using physical situations and misdirection to make larger and grosser kills. What starts as decapitation and mannerism turns into electrocution, so powerful a series of even more unfortunate events ending with a real estate sign to the dome and so many more poofs of existence that I can’t keep track of them all.

While the outrageous death scenes increase in both frequency and eccentricities, the humor from them never wavers. Perkins’ idea of comedy can’t be described as dark though. Macabre, sure. But the deadpan disposition and visible irony you expect from dark humor isn’t the name of this game. The best way to describe it is a situation comedy that just so happens to douse those around the event in buckets of splattered blood. Every time you think that Perkins has topped himself when it comes to bloody extravagance, he takes it up a notch.

The running gags throughout the movie may appeal to a more juvenile audience, but the not-so-subtle homages to Goosebumps make them all make sense. The Monkey throws itself onto a legacy of weird horror fables and the wit that comes with it. Perkins’s ability to seamlessly blend his humor and filmmaking identity into a quintessential King story makes for a good time.

The chaotic creativity makes The Monkey an increasingly good time.

The Monkey is carried by its inventive kill streaks and utterly unhinged massacre in the finale. That said, the actors throughout the film, including notable quick appearances like the film’s opening sequence, make everything come together wonderfully. For his part, though, notable not twin James is never afraid to go full weird. Like both Hal and Bill, James brings two vastly different personalities that help keep the story moving forward but never stop being entertaining.

The movie’s narrative may stumble in spots, but the real test for any viewer will be how well you know Perkins’ filmography, not just as a director but as an actor. If Longlegs is the only time you’ve experienced his work, The Monkey will feel viscerally out of place. However, if you open yourself up to Perkins’ filmmaking idiosyncrasies, the tension-breaking comedic relief in his last film makes all the more sense.

To put it simply, The Monkey is Goosebumps for adults. It’s purely Perkins’ sense of humor that blends wonder and the macabre, but it’s also purely Stephen King in how it captures childhood trauma turning into adult sins. It’s a fun movie that swings for the fence with bigger and bigger kills.

Held back by a narrative that moves from a horror-comedy into a hamfisted allegory for grief, The Monkey is still just a good time that I can only compare to what you feel after rolling credits on something written by R.L. Stine (and with a bit of Final Destination flair). While I won’t go as far as to call this all-ages, it is a film with wide-ranging appeal, and how much you appreciate that will dictate how big your smile is when the final kill pops on screen.

The Monkey will be available in theaters across the US on February 21, 2025.

The Monkey

• 7.5/10 Rating - 7.5/10

7.5/10

TL;DR

To put it simply, The Monkey is Goosebumps for adults. It’s purely Oz Perkins’ sense of humor that blends wonder and the macabre, but it’s also purely Stephen King in how it captures childhood trauma turning into adult sins. It’s a fun film that swings for the fence with bigger and bigger kills.

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