Movie Review: THE MONKEY

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: February 21st, 2025 / 02:58 AM

Rating: R
Stars: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Osgood Perkins, Elijah Wood, Tess Degenstein, Danica Dreyer, Zia Newton, Adam Scott
Writer: Osgood Perkins, based on the short story by Stephen King
Director: Osgood Perkins
Distributor: Neon
Release Date: February 21, 2025

Bestselling prolific author Stephen King has had so much of his work adapted so many times for both the big and small screens that there are jokes going around about making a movie based on King’s grocery list.

THE MONKEY is a film version of the King story of the same name, which was first published in 1980. One issue facing director/screenwriter Osgood Perkins is that this story, like a grocery list albeit not as extreme, doesn’t provide much in the way of source material plot.

In King’s original, Hal is confronted with a toy monkey that he and his brother Bill had in their youth. They had discovered that when the monkey clashed its cymbals together, people and pets around them soon died unexpectedly. Hal thought he’d gotten rid of the monkey, but now he’s grown up and it’s back. Hal is afraid the toy may harm his wife or one of his sons, so he tries to get rid of it again. That’s it.

Filmmaker Perkins has replaced the monkey’s cymbals with a drum that the toy pounds on with drumsticks, while a jaunty carnival tune plays. The deaths it causes are usually – though not always – elaborate Rube Goldberg-like events, starting with the demise of a pawn shop clerk in the opening scene, set in 1999. Here, an airline captain (Adam Scott) is trying, very hard, to get rid of the monkey he’d originally purchased overseas for his boys.

We subsequently meet those boys, twins Bill and Hal, both played by the excellent Christian Convery, who makes them entirely distinct characters. Bill is a few minutes older, and such a bully that Hal fantasizes about killing him.

The boys and their mom Lois (Tatiana Maslany) think that dad/husband has run off, unaware that he’s been done in by the monkey. They also don’t see anything especially strange in finding the monkey in a box in the house.

A few catastrophes later, the boys figure out what the monkey does and attempt to dispose of it.

Cut to twenty-five years later. Hal, now played by Theo James, is supposed to spend a week with his son Petey (Colin O’Brien). Petey thinks that Hal can’t stand him, because Hal keeps his distance. Hal in fact loves his son but is afraid that his proximity to anyone will prove dangerous to them. Then the monkey resurfaces, and Hal must communicate with long-estranged brother Bill (also played by James).

The early sections of THE MONKEY have a certain playful, nightmarish sensibility, but this is stretched past the snapping point once Hal and Bill are adults. Where Convery plays it straight, James has evidently been directed to play both parts for laughs. The thing is, Hal’s failure to explain himself (even with a lie) to Petey isn’t funny; it’s too abashed to even be tragic. Mainly, it’s pathetic, which is something that’s difficult to sustain for any length of time on film.

Following Hal’s thought process, how did he ever get together with Petey’s mom long enough to get her pregnant? And what difference does it make that the monkey has resurfaced, if Hal acts like it has never left?

King has written often about the supernatural allure of bad things – the little boy’s compulsion to go into forbidden rooms in THE SHINING, the main character’s need to keep burying bodies in evil ground in PET SEMATARY – so it’s understandable that Perkins didn’t feel this has to be articulated.

However, much is made of the responsibility of turning the monkey’s key, which sets it to beating the drums, but sometimes the monkey activates itself, which tends to contradict the characters’ concerns. There’s a logic-defying stretch involving a rummage sale and a phone book listing. By the time we get to the climax, and one character’s confession of something that never before occurred to him, some viewers may be actively annoyed.

THE MONKEY has the kinds of kills that populate the FINAL DESTINATION franchise. These work well enough. There’s also a nice meta joke in having Maslany, who played multiple clones opposite herself in the TV series ORPHAN BLACK, in scenes with Convery as twins.

As cursed object movies go, THE MONKEY has good splatter sequences and a fairly creepy centerpiece in the monkey itself. But it lacks the kind of story spine to keep us steadily engaged.

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