Thoughts on The Monkey

Upon walking out of the theater Sunday afternoon, my friend and I stopped by our vehicles and pondered what we had just seen. The sun was shining down, blinding us after two hours sat in a small, dark theater watching - well, we weren't sure. We let the silence linger a moment, soaking in the sunshine that had been sorely absent during the winter months, and finally both blurted out the same thought:

"What the fuck did we just watch?"

It was baffling. It was hilarious. It was horrifying. It was King. It was Perkins. It was something neither I, a professional librarian, nor him, an aspiring English professor, both huge fans of horror in general and Stephen King in particular, could grasp.

What the fuck did we just watch?

The Monkey is - it's dark. There's blood, there's guts, there's exploding heads and trampled bodies and twisted, convoluted deaths that would make Rube Goldberg proud. Within the first three minutes of the film, someone is harpooned and his guts are dragged out, all under the watchful eye of a deadbeat dad and a cursed monkey toy.

Don't call it a toy.

The kills only ramp up from there. And with them, the comedy.

This is a film that does not take itself seriously - not a single moment between the gore and the plot did I feel truly invested in the characters. This isn't a drama - yes, there is a message of generational trauma, yes, there is meant to be a build up of tension between Hal (the protagonist) and Petey (his estranged son), and while I did feel a little bad for them at times, I didn't root for them to bond or overcome their differences and form a family.

I was too distracted by the goddamn monkey.

And the humor.

I love gallows humor - adore dark jokes, love twisted puns, enjoy a good bit of wordplay that reminds us of our faltering mortality, and this movie fucking delivered.

The deadpan. The reactions. The cheerleaders. The timing. I don't think I've laughed that hard at a movie in a long, long time. Perkins specifically wrote the script that way:

"I took liberties like a motherfucker. Atomic Monster had a very serious script. Very serious. I felt it was too serious, and I told them: 'This doesn't work for me. The thing with this toy monkey is that the people around it all die in insane ways. So, I thought: Well, I'm an expert on that.' Both my parents died in insane, headline-making ways. I spent a lot of my life recovering from tragedy, feeling quite bad. It all seemed inherently unfair. You personalize the grief: 'Why is this happening to me?' But I'm older now and you realize this shit happens to everyone. Everyone dies. Sometimes in their sleep, sometimes in truly insane ways, like I experienced. But everyone dies. And I thought maybe the best way to approach that insane notion is with a smile."

-Osgood Perkins, Screen Rant Interview, January 20, 2025

Really, the only thing I disliked about the movie was a twist in the middle.

(SPOILERS BELOW)

Towards the climax of the film we find out someone has the monkey, someone is winding it's key, and that someone, it turns out, is Hal's estranged twin brother, who now views the monkey with something akin to religious fervor. It...didn't feel right, to me. It didn't seem like there was enough build up, enough to show, 'Yes this kid is insane enough to worship a monkey to try and get it to kill his brother for revenge.' If there were clues leading up to it, they went straight over my head. Compared to the original short story (which the movie greatly deviated from), where the monkey itself is the antagonist, with no human counterpart needed, I felt that making twin the bad guy was a poor move. It felt - not shoehorned, but just unfitting of the story.

Then again, King stories aren't known for their endings, are they?

Overall, it was an enjoyable film. I laughed, I jumped, I swore, I was appropriately grossed out and impressed by the practical effects in turn. (Except the cherry-pie sleeping bag. Dear god, that twisted my stomach!). If you like dark comedy, if you like your horror with a side of deadpan and slapstick, if you enjoy the kind of elaborate nonsensical deaths seen in Final Destination, and if you like getting jump scared by Elijah Wood stealing a scene, I highly recommend it!

(If you do not enjoy gore, even when it is played for laughs, I highly recommend you skip it. This thing was a bloody mess!)