"The Monkey" - Not quite my tempo.

Josh
Apr 21, 2025
5 min read

Updated: Apr 23, 2025

Oz Perkins (2025)

I asked why you stopped playing, and your answer was to turn into a wind-up monkey.

Gretal and Hansel is the last movie on my “I should see this before judging” list for Oz Perkins. I liked I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2014), but I was disappointed with Longlegs (2024), although I am willing to admit that was due to my expectations being challenged. And after seeing the horror-comedy The Monkey, I’m unsure if I’m entirely on the side of Oz Perkins. He’s currently at the top of my list of directors I want to enjoy but am struggling to understand. To me, he is a more competent Zach Snyder. Whereas Snyder mostly works for me on a visual level, he never seems to be able to deliver on the themes he wants to explore. Perkins knows how to execute a scene; he’s able to explore complex themes, but how they’re revealed or presented doesn’t fully land with me. The overlay of the demonic hasn’t landed gracefully with his subtext. Working alongside horror legend Stephen King, Perkins adapted his short story for the screen. And like a King story, it has streaks of genius and creativity but doesn't stick the landing.

*Christian Convery, The Monkey (2025) - Courtesy of Neon*

The comedy tone it set up right out the bat, with Adam Scott trying to offload this creepy-looking wind-up monkey toy to a pawn shop owner while covered in blood. When investigating the toy and turning the key at the back, the snare roll builds like a prize wheel until the last hit lands on the name of the person who will die. And like a twisted Rube Goldberg machine, trinkets and pawned off items collide with each other, all the cause of the death of the shop owner. The sequence ends with a comedic wide shot that just rubs salt in the wound. But aye, everyone dies.

Like IT, the film has themes of evil haunting someone through childhood to adulthood, as after the opening stinger, we jump back to our leading twin brothers, Bill and Hall (Christian Convery). Opposites in terms of personality and popularity at school, when finding the monkey amongst their dead fathers belongings, it soon claims its first victim, their babysitter (Danica Dreyer). Our second introduction to the Final Destination style presentation to the deaths, it doesn’t fully grasp the tension those movies reach when building up to the death of someone. She does die in an outlandish way with extreme close-ups of sharp objects and exaggerated sounds that accompany every movement, yet unlike Final Destination, there's more teasing. More foreplay before death. Options are presented, which is then normally followed by a left turn (at least the good ones are). The deaths here are very quick, so there is limited tension, although some could find some of the hard cuts to deaths somewhat comedic. You could almost exaggerate the sound effects to Looney Tunes levels, and it would still work tonelly with the edits.

*Theo James, The Monkey (2025) - Courtesy of Neon*

With the twins' introduction to death, their mum (Tatiana Maslany) explains that, “Everybody dies. Some of us peacefully and in our sleep, and some of us... horribly. And that's life.” But that doesn’t mean you should dwell on that fact. She teaches them that despite the end being closer than they think, they can enjoy the time they’ve got with the people they love. So with the time you’ve got remaining, why not just go home and dance? Yet everything takes a turn when, out of anger from constant schoolyard bullying from Hal, Bill takes the monkey and prays that upon turning the key, it will take the life of his brother. Their mother is the one who pays the price. The inciting incident that split the brothers further from each other. Not taking on their mother's message of letting go, Hal comments about not wanting to take off his clothes from the funeral as, “He’ll just need to put them back on again.” He’s right, though, as not long after, their Uncle (Oz Perkins) is killed in a camping accident. So they dispose of the monkey in the most responsible way a kid knows, throwing it down a well.

Years later, as an adult, Bill, now played by Theo James, is struggling to connect with this son as he insists on avoiding him in hopes it’ll stop his demise. Yet, while spending his one time a year with him, deaths start occurring around him. The monkey is being used once again. That is one of the biggest issues for me. Deaths occur but have no relation to our characters. They are random. There doesn’t seem to be any rules to the Monkey. It doesn’t follow a monkey's paw type scenario, where the audience learns to be careful what they wish for. The monkey is more like a metaphor for death itself. But it’s only random when it wants to be random. It’ll kill family members when it’s convenient, but then it will take out randoms when it wants to. This took away any and all stakes when the key was turned. I don’t care if some random person dies. I care about the characters I’ve been introduced to and understand. But when a whole town is getting wiped out, albeit setting up some funny visuals, there is nothing to get me to stress about them turning the key.

While the kills should be the most entertaining part, to a degree, visually, the sequences look outdated. When practical effects are used, it looks awesome. The closet shotgun death, trampled in the sleeping bag or the surfboard tree death. The simple ones that seem plausible are the most effective. When they go full Looney Tunes, like when a whole swarm of wasps fly into the mouth of a typical King bully, it looks like something out of the early to mid-2000s. Remember the movie Infested (2002)? Yeah, no one does, but it reminded me of that. It doesn't completely ruin the film, but when you watch someone that looks like the last phase of a pre-vis of a woman exploding when jumping into an electrified pool, to the shotgun death, it’s distracting.

As a short horror flick, I can recommend this as an easy watch for most. Although the premise itself is appealing to me, the lack of rules made it so I couldn’t fully get around the concept. I don’t think it would’ve been better if we got a laundry list of steps to use the monkey or a full origin story behind it, but having that, I could understand the consequences for the main character. When actions don’t affect the main character, and in this case, we just have people unattached to the story die, you get Wish Upon (2020). Which is not a movie you want to be compared to. If Oz Perkins approached this with a serious tone, it would be worse, so at least he had the foresight to twist it into something more goofy. Because if why spend an hour getting hit with the constant reminder that our time on Earth is limited. So, again, why not enjoy your remaining time and dance?