The Monkey assures that the Oz Perkins hype is nothing but a fad

Film review

The Monkey may start off with a bang in a highly entertaining opening scene that gives us a taste of the comedic death traps that would make Final Destination blush, but the drama that takes place later down the line doesn’t match the entertainment value of the horror. What you begin to conclude is that this tale would be better off up taking a compilation format of the most creative ways to die rather than have us endure a story that lacks any emotional engagement to force us to care.

Osgood Perkins follows up his 2024 audience smash hit Longlegs with an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 short story The Monkey. The lack of seriousness in Longlegs ended up ruining its potential to be something greater than it was, but Perkins leans in and goes full throttle on comedy in his latest work. It’s highly effective at provoking laughter amongst its audience as we witness some of the most ridiculous ways to die captured in cinema. However, while the craft of the comedy may have been paid special attention to, the same can’t be said for the story.

The Monkey follows the journey of two twin brothers as they discover a toy that kills loved ones, or at least those that are close by, at random when they twist the handle positioned on its back to provoke it to play its musical instrument which leads to a gruesome death. After the death of a babysitter, an uncle and their mother, the young brothers disband the killer toy down a well only to be haunted by it twenty-five years later.

While this premise may sound promising, especially coming from the source material of Stephen King, the adaptation and execution is at least mediocre. Although there’s many factors that may encourage us to care such as sibling rivalry, the bullied child and the confrontation of our own mortality, the drama feels secondary to the comedic gore and as a result, feels soulless. Each time we take a break from the horror to endure the progression of the story, there’s a growing sense of impatience to be thrust back into the killing.

You may argue that the slasher film suffers the same effect of story being secondary to what we all really came here for (the slashing). However, an important ingredient that improves the quality of such work is the element of atmosphere, and The Monkey has none of it. There is no ounce of seriousness to this work where an atmosphere of tension could thrive. The comedic tone throughout could be considered as almost slapstick. This isn’t an argument for the work to tone down on what it does best, but rather a realisation that this could have served more effectively as a compilation short film rather than having to waste our precious time seeing Perkins stretch this out into a feature concept with a lack of care.

Perkins appears to be building a reputation of being Gen Z’s horror godfather, delivering storytelling that panders to an observer that has little interest in intelligence or depth, but merely art that is the equivalent of seal clapping. The filmmaker seems to be shitting out films like there’s no tomorrow with his next horror tale Keeper set for release in time for Halloween season later this year. I wonder whether this rush-filmmaking trajectory may be the reason why The Monkey feels so bare in weight, and judging by the sneak peek of Keeper, I suspect it will suffer the same fate. If so, Perkins is not the next horror mastermind, even if Gen Z claim differently.

Out in UK cinemas now