February 17, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Culture Representation: Taking place in Vancouver, the horror comedy film “The Monkey” (based on the short story of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Identical twin brothers are haunted by a mysterious toy monkey that used to be owned by their father and causes gruesome deaths to the people who become targets of the monkey’s curse.
Culture Audience: “The Monkey” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and filmmaker Osgood Perkins, but some viewers might find the movie’s dark comedy off-putting and awkward.
“The Monkey” blends dark comedy with gory deaths in this horror film about a homicidal toy monkey. The movie (whose first half is better than the second half) isn’t that scary and is more about seeing the bizarre ways that people die. “The Monkey” is far from being a masterpiece, but it’s a good-enough option for people who like horror movies about deadly toys.
Written and directed by Osgood Perkins, “The Monkey” is based on Stephen King’s 1980 short story of the same name. Not much was done to expand on the short story, which is why the screenplay often seems thin and repetitive. After writing and directing the grim horror movies “Gretel & Hansel” (released in 2020) and “Longlegs” (released in 2024), Perkins makes his first horror comedy with “The Monkey.”
The results are mixed. The big showdown scene at the end of “The Monkey” drags out for too long and nearly ruins the film, because by this point in the movie, it’s obvious who will live and who will die. However, up until that point, “The Monkey” is a spectacle of creatively staged kill scenes that are meant to be absurdist.
“The Monkey” (which was filmed on location in Vancouver) begins sometime in the early 1990s, by showing an airline pilot captain named Petey Shelborn (played by Adam Scott) frantically bursting into a pawn shop and carrying a creepy-looking toy monkey that is seated with a drum. The monkey has a wind-up screw that makes the monkey play the drums when the screw is wound up. Petey, who has blood on his pilot uniform, doesn’t care about selling this item. He just wants to get rid of it.
Petey tells the unnamed pawn shop owner (played by Shafin Karim): “I need you to take this thing off my hands and make it someone else’s problem … It’s not a toy. Don’t ever call it that … You do not ever want the drumstick come down. Because if it does, we are all fucked to hell.”
The pawn shop owner takes the monkey with curiosity. And the most predictable thing happens next: The monkey still has some of its playing power left over from when the last time it was wound up. The monkey starts playing the drums.
A rat in the shop suddenly chews on a rope, and the broken rope causes the pawn shop owner to be harpooned by a spear that was in the shop. It’s an elaborate booby-trap-styled kill. Petey then uses a flamethrower to try to burn the monkey.
The movie then abruptly cuts to 1999. What happened to Petey? It’s never revealed exactly, but his wife Lois (played by Tatiana Maslany) hasn’t had contact with Petey for years. Lois has bitterly assumed that Petey has abandoned her and their identical twin sons Hal (played by Christian Convery) and Bill (also played by Convery), who are about 13 or 14 years old in 1999.
Why has Lois assumed that Petey is a deadbeat absentee dad? Because of his pilot job, Petey traveled a lot and was an unfaithful husband, according to Lois. She has assumed that Petey ran off with a mistress and started a new life somewhere else. That’s what she has been telling Hal and Bill, who have mixed feelings of resentment toward Petey but also wishing that Petey was still in their lives.
Bill was born first and is a dominant bully to sensitive and introverted Hal. An adult Hal is the narrator of the film. Most of the movie’s scenes that take place in 1999 are about Bill being cruel to Hal. But one day, Hal decides he’s going to get revenge on Bill. And he knows just how to do it.
Before Petey disappeared, he would come home from his airline travels and bring gifts for his Lois and the twins. One day, Hal and Bill are rummaging through things in their home when they discover a wind-up toy monkey that can play a drum. It’s the same monkey that Petey tried to get rid of at the pawn shop. The monkey is mute.
It isn’t long before the twins find out that if the monkey plays the drum, someone nearby will soon die a very violent death. However, as repeated in the movie, the monkey “doesn’t take requests” on who will be the next to die. Therefore, anyone who tries to use the monkey to kill someone might accidentally have someone else killed who isn’t the intended target.
That’s the main reason why watching “The Monkey” is an unpredictable ride. However, movie falls short when it comes to developing characters that viewers will actually care about besides Hal. The deaths in the movie are so freakish, “The Monkey” tends to over-rely on these deaths in substitute for an suspenseful story.
Hal and Bill have a babysitter named Annie Wilkes (played by Danica Dreyer), who takes the twins to a Benihana-type of Japanese restaurant while Lois is on a blind date. (Fans of King’s books will notice that Annie Wilkes is the same name for the villain in King’s 1987 novel “Misery,” which was later made in to an Oscar-winning 1990 movie of the same name.) The monkey is left in the car and starts playing the drums. It’s the first time that the twins see the evil power of the monkey.
Without giving away too much information, at one point in the movie, Hal and Bill have to spend time living with Lois’ brother Chip (played by Perkins) and Chip’s wife Ida (played by Sarah Levy), who don’t want really want to spend time taking care of children. Chip also tells the twins that he and Ida are swingers. You can easily predict that something bad will happen to Chip and/or Ida.
When Bill and Hall find out that they’re in possession of an evil monkey toy, they decide to do something about it. These actions will follow them into their adulthood, which is shown in the second half of the movie. This second half of “The Monkey” is a bit of a tonal mess but has fairly good performances, despite the movie going overboard with nonsensical kills.
The adult years for Bill and Hal take place in 2024. Hal (played by Theo James) is now a single father who works at as a low-paid sales clerk at a general store. Hal is an emotionally aloof loner who has a distant, almost non-existent relationship with his teenage son Petey (played by Colin O’Brien) not because of a custody arrangement but because Hal deliberately does not want to get too emotionally close to Petey. Hal, who sees his son Petey only once a year, still has a lot of unprocessed trauma from his past regarding the toy monkey and Hal’s own absentee father.
Hal’s son Petey (who is about 13 or 14 years old) was born from a fling that Hal had with Petey’s mother (played by Laura Mennell), who doesn’t have a name in the movie. Petey’s mother is married to a pompous self-help guru/author named Ted (played by Eljah Wood), who is a religious expert on fatherhood. Ted has written books titled “Jesus Dad” and “Fatherhood VII.” Hal starts to regret being mostly unavailable to Petey when Hal finds out during his annual visit with Petey that Ted is going to adopt Petey.
Hal and Bill (also played by James) are estranged and have not seen and spoken to each other in years. But in a movie like “The Monkey,” you know that there will be a reason for Hal and Bill to see each other again. Meanwhile, Hal decides to take Petey to an amusement place called Horror Heaven during a father/son excursion that will take place just a few days before Ted officially adopts Petey.
The “daddy issues” are all over this movie because there’s a flimsy subplot about an unnamed cop (played by Paul Puzzella) and his hooligan son Ricky (played by Rohan Campbell), who has been hired to find the menacing monkey. Why can’t this monkey be destroyed? There’s a rushed and not-very-believable explanation for that in the movie.
“The Monkey” walks a fine line between being wickedly laughable and being downright silly. The origins of the monkey are never explained, which is a huge letdown in the movie’s flawed screenplay. The cast members are serviceable in their roles, but the movie starts to lose its edge once the monkey is in the hands of adults, not children. The filmmakers of “The Monkey” obviously want this film to be the start of a series or franchise, but any other stories based on this one should have more reasons to care about the main characters.
Neon will release “The Monkey” in U.S. cinemas on February 21, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on February 12, 2025.
