‘The Monkey’ Review – Death Gets Funny and Gory in This Madcap Stephen King Adaptation

One recurring line in writer/director Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey cuts right to the heart of the film’s plot and tone: “Everybody dies, and that’s life.” Like Longlegs, Perkins centers his latest around the suffocating, inescapable inevitability of death, only this time, the filmmaker mines that for absurdist laughs instead of chilling dread.

The adaptation of Stephen King’s short story uses its source material as a loose framework for a Final Destination-style, gory comedy romp filled with a nonstop onslaught of over-the-top, Rube Goldberg machine-like elaborate deaths. All of it is a comical, carnage-fueled reminder of the film’s core thesis: Death comes for us all, and it’s quite silly to presume you can stop it.

The first sign that Perkins’ The Monkey won’t be an exact retelling of King’s story comes from a whimsically gnarly opening sequence that introduces a blood-drenched pilot (Adam Scott) marching into a pawn store to offload a vintage monkey toy. There’s both a sense of playfulness and tension as the nervous man seeks to remove himself from the eerie plaything before it winds up once more, banging the toy drum that will trigger the universe to claim another body in the most gruesome means possible.

After it does, in the most laugh-out-loud outlandish way possible, The Monkey skips ahead to introduce the pilot’s twin sons, Hal and Bill Shelburne, played by Christian Convery (Cocaine Bear) as kids and Theo James (“Castlevania”) as adults. The siblings, complete opposites in every way, discover Dad’s unsettling Monkey in the attic and, in turn, its parlor trick for causing death. It drives a permanent wedge between the brothers, even as the cursed toy resurfaces in adulthood to wreak further havoc.

Osgood Perkins is clearly having an absolute blast bombarding his audience with a nonstop barrage of death sequences in The Monkey, and it’s infectious to watch. A woman’s head getting set on fire is only the beginning of an over-the-top demise that spans an entire house and front yard, as just one absurdly funny example of the Monkey’s devious machinations. It’s not just the intricate series of events that elicits maximum suffering and damage for laughs but the supporting cast as well.

Tatiana Maslany charms as the twins’ put upon mother, a character at the forefront of imparting the “Death is life“ mantra. Sarah Levy’s physical comedy pairs well with Perkins’ twisted sense of humor here, with the filmmaker himself appearing onscreen in an imaginative cameo as the boys’ swinger Uncle. Also game for this brand of gonzo cinema are Elijah Wood (The Toxic Avenger) and Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) as additional weirdos hindering Hal and Bill’s bid to find Monkey closure.

Convery and James anchor the insanity with dual grounding performances. Convery nails the shell-shocked, early exploration with the Monkey’s modus operandi, which Perkins wisely refuses to ever explain. But it’s James who turns in a revelatory performance, both as the audience proxy and as antagonistic foil, with dry wit and a willingness to swing for the fences with the script’s most outrageous demands. That’s at its most electric when James faces himself on screen, showcasing two distinctly different personalities caught in a bizarro cycle of death.

Those hoping for a straightforward, faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s story won’t find it here; Perkins leans into the setup and its core components but is far more interested in playing mad conductor with his symphony of morbid mayhem. It’s the type of gleefully unhinged sense of humor for horror fans, though the barrage of intricate carnage often means a reliance on VFX over practical. It’s also a high concept effort that, like its cursed plaything, only has one note to bang over and over.

That’s okay when The Monkey is this dementedly joyous. It’s a movie that points out the cruel randomness of mortality over and over, with tongue-in-cheek wit and cartoonish violence. Perkins weaves a raucous cautionary tale that smashes subtlety with a sledgehammer. Death happens, over and over again, and it’s absurdly funny, Perkins seems to say, that humans think they can thwart its designs. With brisk storytelling efficiency and a playful spirit, The Monkey delivers a Stephen King adaptation like no other. Perkins pushes back against logic in favor of entertaining midnight madness, and death has never been funnier or gorier as a result.

The Monkey releases in theaters on February 21, 2025.

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