If you’re Gen X, or older, you might remember a creepy toy from your childhood, a monkey with unsettling eyes that, when wound up, would bang cymbals together frantically, bob its head up and down while grinning, and sometimes make screeching monkey-like sounds. These things were terrifying and probably cursed. The cymbal-banging monkey is the monster in Stephen King’s 1980 short story The Monkey, in which twin brothers find what they assume is a toy, only to later discover that when the monkey claps its cymbals together, chaos and death follow. In 2025, Oz Perkins adapted the King short story into a film called The Monkey, but was forced to change the cymbals to drums when a producer told Perkins Walt Disney owns the rights to the cymbal-playing monkey because of a character in the movie Toy Story 3.
If you’d like to learn about The Monkey in a spoiler-free context, head over to EoM Contributor Andrew Eisenman’s initial theatrical release review.
The Monkey in Osgood Perkins’ 2025 horror comedy THE MONKEY. Image courtesy of NEON.
Written and directed by Oz Perkins, The Monkey is dramatically different from his previous films, which are usually slow-burn, atmospheric thrillers, filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. Perkins’s first feature film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015), tells the story of a young woman who might be possessed by Satan, similar to his film Longlegs (2024), about a serial killer who sends out Satanic dolls that possess the receiver. The Monkey follows twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn, who find an odd toy monkey that grins and plays drums when wound up, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Perkins is not known for comedy, but The Monkey is brutally, laugh-out-loud funny and features some of the most unique deaths ever in a horror movie, and extreme blood and gore. It’s not for the faint of heart.
L-R: Christian Convery as Young Hal Shelburn & Young Bill Shelburn and Tatiana Maslany as Lois Shelburn in THE MONKEY. Photo courtesy of NEON.
In The Monkey, Christian Convery (Cocaine Bear) plays teenage twins Hal and Bill, who believe their father, Petey Shelburn (Adam Scott), abandoned their family. Their mother, Lois, is played by Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) in a sensationally droll performance. One day, while going through their father’s belongings, the twins find a large toy monkey holding drum sticks with a drum and a wind-up key in a box. When they wind the monkey up, nothing happens, so they decide it must be broken. After an unexpected and outrageous death, Lois gives a chilling, foreboding monologue of good advice to her sons, the message of which becomes the central point of the story — we’re all going to die, and that’s just life. A basic life lesson like this feels especially profound coming from filmmaker Oz Perkins, who lost both of his parents in tragic ways, so if anyone should be telling the story of a family torn apart by death, it’s him, and he does a brilliant job combining macabre storytelling with raucous humor in The Monkey.
Jason Burkart as Lawnmower Neighbor in THE MONKEY. Photo courtesy of NEON.
Twenty-five years later, Hal and Bill, played marvelously by Theo James (The White Lotus; The Gentlemen), are estranged and believe they put an end to whatever hellish curse the monkey carries with it by tossing it down a well when they were kids. Hal has a teenage son, Petey, played by Colin O’Brien (Dear Edward), who he chooses to only see once a year because he’s afraid the monkey will return and cause Petey to die. After Hal and Petey check into a motel, Bill calls Hal in the middle of the night to tell him their Aunt Ida is dead. Bill tells Hal he has to go to Ida’s house and look for the monkey, and when he reluctantly does, the realtor tells him there have been many outlandish deaths in town recently, right before she dies in front of Hal. There have been so many deaths that cheerleaders are waving pom poms and cheering outside the house when the coroner brings out the realtor in a body bag, just one example of the dark humor that permeates the film. And Perkins’s twisted comedy works quite well in The Monkey’s favor.
Nicco Del Rio as Rookie Priest in THE MONKEY. Photo courtesy of NEON.
Edward J. Douglas, the lead visual effects supervisor on The Monkey, and fellow VFX supervisors Chris van Dyck and Tom Rolfe, as well as SFX coordinator Chris Pyne, all worked on Longlegs (2024) and are responsible for the Grand-Guignolesque deaths in the film, which begin as practical and are enhanced with special effects. The Monkey features decapitation, an exploding body, death by harpoon gun, being shredded by a lawnmower, and swallowing hornets, to name only a few of the incredibly creative deaths in the film, all executed with a dose of black comedy.
Actor Theo James and writer/director Osgood Perkins on the set of THE MONKEY. Photo courtesy of NEON.
The Monkey is a funny, wildly entertaining film filled with imaginative, blood-soaked deaths and unlike anything you’ve seen before in a horror movie. Both Christian Convery and Theo James give impressive performances playing two very different characters as Hal and Bill, and Colin O’Brien is outstanding as Petey. Don’t say you weren’t warned, Gen X, because this film will bring back long forgotten memories of that cursed monkey with cymbals you probably were too scared to play with as a kid.
The Blu-ray for The Monkey doesn’t come with a lot of special features, but the interviews with cast and behind-the-scenes featurettes are informative and entertaining.
The Monkey Special Features:
- Outrageously Gory and Thoroughly Gratuitous
- The Cast of The Monkey
- Becoming Hal and Bill
- Funeral programs
- Original trailers
Available on VOD and digital April 4th, 2025.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD June 24th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official NEON The Monkey webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Recommendation
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