When Stephen King Meets a Killer Toy, You’d Expect More
There’s a particular kind of horror movie that drives me nuts the kind that clearly wants to be wild, unhinged, unpredictable, and hilarious, but ends up feeling like it’s constantly explaining its own joke. The Monkey, directed by Osgood Perkins and based on Stephen King’s short story, is that movie. It’s a stylish, bloody mess that mistakes tonal whiplash for depth and irony for personality.
And I hate saying that, because on paper, this thing should have been fun. A cursed toy monkey that causes random, gruesome deaths every time it drums? Theo James playing twins at war with their own childhood trauma? Elijah Wood and Adam Scott lurking around the edges like they wandered in from different movies? I was ready to have a good time. I even laughed at the trailer’s over-the-top mayhem. But watching the actual film is like watching someone try to juggle knives underwater. You can see the effort, but it’s exhausting, and nobody makes it out unscathed.
Death by Irony
The movie starts strong. A creepy antiques shop, a soldier trying to return the monkey, and then bang, bang a harpoon gun fires through someone’s stomach in glorious Rube Goldberg fashion. It’s gory, absurd, and effective. For a minute, it feels like Perkins might pull off the darkly comic tone he’s going for.
Then the tone changes. Then it changes again. And again. By the time the monkey claims its second or third victim, the movie doesn’t know if it wants to scare you, make you laugh, or get a knowing “hmm” from the A24 crowd. It’s a constant tug‑of‑war between self‑awareness and sincerity, and neither side ever wins.
Theo James plays twin brothers Hal and Bill, both scarred by their mother’s death and the cursed toy that seems to follow them through the decades. He’s good at pulling off the “one’s haunted, one’s unhinged” dynamic with surprising nuance. But the movie buries him under a pile of tonal detours and side characters who feel like they belong in a completely different film. Every time he starts to find emotional rhythm, the movie cuts to another creatively staged death scene that plays like a commercial for Final Destination’s discount cousin.
Perkins’ Problem
Osgood Perkins has style. There’s no denying that. The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Longlegs proved he can build tension out of quiet dread. But The Monkey feels like a filmmaker running from his own instincts. The direction here screams, “Don’t take this seriously!” even as it keeps trying to show you serious emotion. The comedy undercuts the horror, and the horror drains the comedy.
When a babysitter gets decapitated by a flying hibachi knife, I wasn’t horrified, I was confused. Not by the death itself, but by the way it was staged, half slapstick, half trauma flashback. The rhythm of the editing kills any suspense. It’s not funny enough to be funny, not scary enough to be scary. It’s a tonal black hole that swallows everything near it.
Perkins said in interviews that he added humor because he’s lived through personal tragedy and wanted to explore the randomness of death with a smile. That’s a thoughtful approach in theory. But in execution, the movie just feels uneven, like it’s stuck between a meditation on grief and a carnival sideshow.
A Toy Story Gone to Hell
Let’s talk about the monkey itself. It’s a cool design, brass face, chipped paint, creepy eyes, tiny drums that click in the silence like a countdown. Every time it plays, someone dies in a random, over-the-top fashion. But even that starts to wear thin. After the third or fourth death, the audience starts playing a different game: “Guess how ridiculous the next one will be.”
There’s no escalation, no rhythm, just a series of gags stitched together with family drama that never really lands. The movie tries to build a story about generational trauma like fathers abandoning sons, brothers resenting each other, grief looping like a cursed melody. But none of it hits with real weight. It’s hard to care about anyone when the film itself seems more interested in how far it can push the next kill.
By the time the monkey starts drumming uncontrollably and the entire town descends into chaos, I’d checked out emotionally. It’s loud, it’s big, it’s trying desperately to be profound. Instead, it feels like someone accidentally wound the key too far and couldn’t stop the movie from self‑destructing.
Final Thoughts
The Monkey isn’t terrible in the sense that it’s unwatchable. It’s just frustrating. You can see the potential in every frame with a sharp concept, a solid lead performance, a director who clearly has ideas. But those ideas never connect. The movie doesn’t know how to balance its grief with its gore, or its absurdity with its sincerity. It just flails.
At its best, it’s a darkly funny riff on the randomness of death. At its worst, it’s an overlong, self‑satisfied jumble that mistakes chaos for cleverness.
I didn’t hate watching it. I just didn’t care. And for a movie about a toy that kills anyone who stops paying attention, that might be the biggest irony of all.