Movie Review: The Monkey (2025)
Synopsis: After their father, an airline pilot, disappears, twin brothers Hal and Bill are raised by their mother. While going through their father's stuff, the twins come across a toy drum-playing monkey. Even though it seems to be broken, Hal decides to keep it and soon realizes the toy comes with a terrible curse, whenever it plays the drums, someone dies. Twenty-five years later, believing the monkey is safely imprisoned in a well but still traumatized, Hal is estranged from his brother and only sees his son, Petey, once per year. During that annual visitation, he learns Petey's stepdad is going to attempt to take away his custody rights, but that problem soon becomes secondary to learning the monkey has begun killing again.
Who's in it? The movie stars Theo James, Colin O'Brien, Tatiana Maslany, Sarah Levy and Elijah Wood.
Review: I hadn't planned on going to the movies last night as part of date night with my wife. However, she didn't seem to be in the mood for karaoke (and I really wasn't either) and The Monkey was one of the options at the theater, so we decided to give the film a try. It turned out not to be quite what I was expecting but it still was an OK choice.
I had figured, based on the description, this would be a straight-up horror film. Instead, as I learned (and probably would have known if I had done a bit more research), it's more of a dark comedy with a plot that isn't unlike Final Destination but with a different villain and more of a light-hearted tone.
The relationship between Hal and Bill (James) was an intriguing one, with the latter being the dominant twin to the point he was constantly bullying Hal, even as adults. This made it easy to understand why Hal chose not to stay in contact and even think of Bill as being dead. It also put his strained relationship with his teenage son, Petey (O'Brien) into a bit more perspective because, in addition to protecting Petey from that toy monkey's curse, he was clearly protecting him from that side of his family, even if it meant losing custody to Petey's stepdad, Ted (Wood).
The death scenes in the movie were the most memorable part about it though. I don't want to go into detail but, as I mentioned, they are similar to what you may have seen in the Final Destination movies and very gory. I was getting as much enjoyment watching my wife's face when she saw some of the over-the-top deaths as much as the scenes themselves.
My only real complaint about the movie is it felt a bit incomplete. It could have used a bit more depth to the storyline and had quite a few loose strings at the end.
For example, it never does show what happened to the twins' father (Adam Scott), just that he had the monkey first, clearly had a similar experience and was attempting to destroy it. If he left to protect his family, why was the monkey still there?
As I was going to bed last night, I also realized the movie doesn't resolve the whole Hal/Petey custody issue or explain why it took 25 years for the monkey to get back in their possession. If they were the ones cursed by it, you would think it would have gone immediately back to one of them after escaping the well.
It was a relatively short movie, only about 98 minutes, so there was room to add to it and answer at least some of the questions. It wasn't anything that necessarily ruined the movie for me, just left me scratching my head and thinking too much about it, including if that was by design and there are plans for a sequel or prequel.
Final Opinion: It's not a perfect film and I'm not sure I would consider it among my favorite Stephen King-inspired movies. However, it was an entertaining movie and worth watching if you aren't too squeamish.
My Grade: B
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Here are some reviews of other movies inspired by Stephen King:
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