r96sk

Feb 21, 2025

7.0

'The Monkey' has a great concept and I enjoyed the wacky nature of it, I did almost lose interest in the human characters towards the end though. That isn't the best sign given the short 90 minute run time, but the end does come when desired so that saves it. Theo James is pretty good in this, for sure the most I've liked seeing him. I haven't seen him act much (five films now), my main thought of him is actually with human excrement up his nose (yep) in 'The Inbetweeners Movie'... hopefully this performance will override that memory (it won't). The gore shown for all the titular character's escapades is very cool and rather creative to be honest, the 'freak accident' angle is a fun one to watch play out onscreen. Everything with the red-eyed fellow is definitely what makes this movie, as it ought to really. A stronger overall story and I probably would've loved it.

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://movieswetextedabout.com/the-monkey-review-a-chaotic-blend-of-tones-and-genres-that-misses-the-mark/ "The Monkey teeters between ingenuity and frustration. Osgood Perkins crafts moments of inspiration and gets the best out of a solid cast, but the lack of a cohesive identity prevents its erratic blend of tones and genres from reaching its true potential. For some, this chaotic, blood-soaked mix of horror, satire, family drama, and comedy will feel refreshing and daring; for others, it will be simply exasperating and disorienting. Personally, it didn't work... at all." Rating: C-

CinemaSerf

Mar 2, 2025

6.0

This takes for ever to get going and once it does, it’s really an unoriginal semi-comedic horror drama centred around yet another not-so-menacing puppet. This time, it’s squabbling brothers “Hal” and “Bill” who discover an old hat box after their father dies and in it is what looks like a toy monkey. They wind it up and next thing, their babysitter is no more and that’s the just the start of it’s malevolence. Putting two and two together, they decide it’s best to drop the thing down a well and get on with growing up. Scoot on years later and now “Hal” (Theo James) has a son of his own “Petey” (Colin O’Brien) and is trying to rebuild some bridges with him after his marriage collapsed. Equally estranged is his twin, so he’s not impressed when, out of the blue, he is called and told their aunt has died. He now has to drag the reluctant lad along to the home they grew up in and guess what is in the wardrobe? At times it’s quite funny, but I’m not sure how intentional that is as James delivers a seriously flat performance and the epitome of sibling rivalries involves a frankly risible degree of menace. It’s not that the idea is rubbish, though it is derivative, it’s that the acting and writing are poor and the scenarios - familial discord, new stepdad (Elijah Wood) etc. are all just too predictable and it provides virtually nothing new over a lacklustre one hundred minutes. I could certainly think of a few good uses for the chimp, though!

What a Deliciously Gory and Most Horrific intro to the film, just simple beauty. This has to be the Silliest Horror film I've seen since "Army of Darkness," and I'm assuming the silly "Goosebumps" + Gore will get more creative and intense. A Satisfyingly Hilarious Gory film and a must-see for fans of Comedic Horror.

"The Monkey" is by turns amusing, startling, unexpectedly humorous and unashamedly great fun. It will leave you in a head spinning state of comical disbelief at what you have just witnessed. It is superb how it effortlessly wrecks all manner of havoc and becomes increasingly bizarre and undeniably gross every time the creepy looking cursed monkey toy starts playing its drum. This exhilarating exercise in bad taste will certainly be disagreeable for those people with weak stomachs whereas for the rest of us more hardy souls it is invigorating to watch a film which is so resolutely steadfast in its determination to push against and blatantly defy the restraints of decorum and good taste to give us such a wonderfully enjoyable and gore drenched guilty pleasure.

Marco-Hugo Landeta Vacas

Sep 10, 2026

6.0

(CASTELLANO) Hay películas que a los diez minutos ya te han enseñado exactamente qué quieren ser, y esta es una de ellas. Un mono de juguete inquietante, una cadena de muertes absurdas y grotescas, humor negro, sangre a chorros y la sensación constante de que la muerte puede aparecer de la forma más ridícula posible. La idea funciona. De hecho, durante bastante rato me lo pasé bien. Osgood Perkins toma el relato de Stephen King y lo lleva hacia un terreno mucho más gamberro que terrorífico, casi como si Destino final hubiera decidido reírse de sí misma. Hay algo liberador en esa falta de solemnidad: aquí la muerte llega, hace una barbaridad y continúa. El problema es que una buena ocurrencia no siempre aguanta una película entera. El mono, eso sí, funciona de maravilla como presencia. Tiene algo profundamente desagradable incluso cuando no está haciendo nada. No necesita moverse demasiado ni enseñar grandes trucos: basta con verlo ahí, esperando, con esa expresión inmóvil, para que la escena ya tenga mal rollo. Perkins entiende muy bien ese poder visual y juega con él, igual que juega con los encuadres, los cortes bruscos y la anticipación de unas muertes que casi nunca ocurren como uno espera. Algunas son tan exageradas que dejan de dar miedo y entran directamente en lo cómico. Y ahí está buena parte de la gracia: no pretende que suframos por cada cadáver, sino que nos preguntemos hasta dónde va a llevar la siguiente barbaridad. Hay momentos en los que esa mezcla funciona estupendamente y uno se ríe casi con mala conciencia. Por eso la comparación con Destino final me parece inevitable. No porque las historias sean iguales, sino por esa lógica de fatalidad en la que sabes que algo horrible va a ocurrir y el verdadero juego consiste en descubrir cómo. Hay muertes ingeniosas, otras directamente delirantes y alguna que me hizo reír precisamente por lo excesiva que resulta. Esa mezcla de gore y comedia negra es, con diferencia, lo mejor de la película. Theo James además sostiene bien el doble papel y encuentra un tono suficientemente serio como para que alrededor pueda desatarse semejante locura sin que todo se convierta en una parodia completa. Me gusta también que Perkins no intente repetir el terror de Longlegs: aquí parece querer divertirse, ensuciarlo todo y convertir la muerte en un gag. Pero llega un momento en que la fórmula empieza a enseñarse demasiado. Mono, amenaza, muerte extravagante, reacción, siguiente. Cambia el decorado, cambia la víctima, cambia el mecanismo, pero la sensación empieza a ser la misma. Y ahí fue cuando yo empecé a desconectar. Lo que al principio me sorprendía terminó convirtiéndose en una espera: vale, ¿cómo van a cargarse ahora al siguiente? El problema no es que la película sea excesiva; precisamente esa desmesura forma parte de su personalidad. El problema es que acaba siendo repetitiva. Cuando el impacto depende de sorprenderte, repetir el mecanismo demasiadas veces termina reduciendo el efecto. Al principio esperaba la siguiente muerte con curiosidad; hacia el final esperaba que llegara simplemente para acercarme un poco más a los créditos. También intentan construir debajo de todo ese festival sangriento una historia sobre hermanos, padres, hijos, culpa y la inevitabilidad de la muerte. Está bien que exista porque evita que la película sea únicamente una sucesión de accidentes macabros, y entiendo la idea de fondo: la muerte es absurda, inevitable y no negocia con nadie. Pero esa parte emocional nunca llegó a interesarme tanto como parecía esperar de mí. Cada vez que la película vuelve al mono y al humor negro recupera vida; cuando quiere que me preocupe mucho por los conflictos personales, baja varios enteros. No porque estén mal interpretados, sino porque la parte humana no tiene la misma fuerza ni la misma originalidad que la macabra. El desequilibrio termina pesando. Al final me quedó una sensación bastante clara: está bien, pero ya. Tiene personalidad, tiene imágenes estupendas, el mono acojona bastante y algunas muertes son tan imaginativas como ridículas. Entiendo perfectamente que haya quien disfrute muchísimo con este tipo de comedia gore y la convierta en una fiesta; de hecho, yo también disfruté durante una parte importante. Pero después empezó a parecerme que estaba viendo variaciones del mismo chiste y terminé deseando que acabara. Perkins demuestra que sabe filmar el absurdo, la violencia y el mal rollo, y hay talento visual detrás de toda esa carnicería. Pero esta vez la broma se alarga más de lo que a mí me funciona. Divertida por momentos, desagradable cuando quiere y con un juguete que preferiría no encontrarme nunca en casa. Pero, una vez terminado el espectáculo, tampoco me dejó mucho más. (ENGLISH) Some films show you exactly what they want to be within ten minutes, and this is one of them. A creepy toy monkey, a chain of absurd and grotesque deaths, black humor, gallons of blood and the constant feeling that death can arrive in the most ridiculous way possible. The idea works. In fact, I had a good time for quite a while. Osgood Perkins takes Stephen King's story and pushes it into territory that is far more mischievous than frightening, almost as if Final Destination had decided to laugh at itself. There is something liberating about that lack of solemnity: here death arrives, does something outrageous and moves on. The problem is that a good idea does not always sustain an entire film. The monkey itself, though, works wonderfully as a presence. There is something deeply unpleasant about it even when it is doing nothing. It does not need to move much or perform elaborate tricks: just seeing it there, waiting with that frozen expression, is enough to make a scene feel wrong. Perkins understands that visual power very well and plays with it, just as he plays with framing, sudden cuts and the anticipation of deaths that almost never happen the way you expect. Some are so exaggerated that they stop being frightening and become outright comic. That is a large part of the fun: the film does not want us to mourn every corpse, but to wonder how far the next atrocity will go. At times that mixture works brilliantly and you almost laugh with a guilty conscience. That is why the comparison with Final Destination feels unavoidable to me. Not because the stories are the same, but because of that logic of fatality in which you know something horrible is going to happen and the real game is discovering how. Some deaths are clever, others completely deranged, and a few made me laugh precisely because of how excessive they are. That mixture of gore and black comedy is, by far, the best part of the film. Theo James also handles the dual role well and finds a tone serious enough to let all that madness explode around him without turning everything into a complete parody. I also like that Perkins does not try to repeat the horror of Longlegs: here he seems more interested in having fun, making a mess and turning death into a gag. But eventually the formula starts showing itself too clearly. Monkey, threat, extravagant death, reaction, next. The setting changes, the victim changes, the mechanism changes, but the feeling starts becoming the same. That is where I began to disconnect. What initially surprised me eventually became a waiting game: fine, so how are they going to kill the next one? The problem is not that the film is excessive; that excess is part of its personality. The problem is that it becomes repetitive. When the impact depends on surprising you, repeating the mechanism too many times gradually weakens the effect. At first I waited for the next death with curiosity; near the end I was waiting for it simply because it brought me a little closer to the credits. Underneath all that bloody spectacle, the film also tries to build a story about brothers, fathers, sons, guilt and the inevitability of death. It is good that this exists, because it keeps the film from becoming nothing more than a succession of macabre accidents, and I understand the underlying idea: death is absurd, inevitable and negotiates with no one. But that emotional side never interested me as much as the film seemed to expect it to. Every time it returns to the monkey and the black humor, it comes alive again; when it wants me to care deeply about the personal conflicts, it drops several levels. Not because the performances are bad, but because the human side lacks the same force and originality as the macabre one. That imbalance eventually weighs on the film. In the end, my feeling was pretty clear: it is fine, but that is about it. It has personality, some excellent images, the monkey is genuinely creepy and several deaths are as imaginative as they are ridiculous. I completely understand why some people have a great time with this kind of gore comedy and turn it into a party; in fact, I enjoyed a substantial part of it too. But eventually it started to feel like I was watching variations on the same joke, and I ended up wanting it to finish. Perkins shows that he knows how to film absurdity, violence and unease, and there is visual talent behind all that carnage. But this time the joke lasts longer than it works for me. Fun at times, nasty when it wants to be, and featuring a toy I would never want to find in my house. Once the show was over, though, it did not leave me with much else.