The Monkey (dir. Osgood Perkins)
By: Adam Freed
The short fiction of Stephen King has been fodder for some of Hollywood’s most impressive and memorable adaptations. King’s “The Body” morphed into the transcendent 80’s coming of age drama Stand By Me (1986), in which four childhood friends pursue the remains of a dead classmate, and in so doing cement the core memories of the irreplaceable preteen years. Less than a decade later King’s “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” caught critics and curious audiences by surprise by slowly evolving into one the most beloved films in history under the title, The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Decades later, another of the horror icon’s works of short fiction earns the adaptation treatment in the form of The Monkey, a film directed by Osgood Perkins (Long Legs), a director in the midst of a precipitous rise in notoriety within the horror community. The Monkey is a gruesome dark comedy following the torturous multi generational impact that a mechanical drumming monkey has on twin brothers Bill and Hal.
When Perkins’ film hits, it is a gory laugh riot, featuring a Pollock-esque canvas of sinew enhanced blood splatter so debased and demented that audiences are forced to juggle their disgust with their good natured predilections towards laughter. In this way, The Monkey feels like a much more graphic homage to Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), another film that allows the darkness of mortality to be observed through a comedic lens. One’s propensity to buy into the ridiculous premise of The Monkey is likely to hinge on the grace that can be mustered for a film that makes the controversial choice to cast the same actor (Christian Convery) to play twins Bill and Hal in their youth, and Theo James (The Gentleman, The White Lotus) to play the same characters a generation later. James’ inclusion in the proceedings marks a major fracture point in Perkins’ maniacal film. The Monkey leans into a bold leap regarding timeline that forces the exit of the twin boys that audiences will have anchored as central protagonists of Perkins’ film. Although the quarter century jump doesn’t completely destroy momentum, it forces viewers to momentarily recalibrate and reconnect with a new face carrying the action.
Unlike Osgood Perkins’ breakthrough directorial horror hit Long Legs (2024), a film clearly inspired by the legendary serial killer thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Monkey avoids a singular morose tone in favor of one that wavers between slapstick and slasher. While the laughs are genuine, the thrills in The Monkey are over-reliant on grotesquery and never earn a genuine psychological foothold that will become a permanent feature in film horror lore. This tonal confusion results in a less than satisfying resolution to a film that offers a great deal more by way of premise than in its eventualized presentation.
The mind of horror master Stephen King has proven fertile soil to some of the greatest film adaptations in Hollywood history. Despite offering an intriguing premise and some shockingly devilish body horror laughs, director Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey is more likely to earn a cult following than a genuine seat at the table of horror’s elite.
Target Score 6.5/10 - Osgood Perkins continues his assault on the world of horror with his riotous and revolting adaptation of a Stephen King short story. The Monkey is a dark comedy about a family tortured by a toy brought home by their father decades before. Likewise, audiences may be tortured by the intensity of the film’s parade of entrails in the name of entertainment.