Theo James battles a Satanic monkey in this playfully gory horror-comedy

American writer-director Oz Perkins flexes his imaginative muscles to deliver outlandish means of awful death such as decapitation and dismemberment ... but it’s how they happen that is unusual.

Stephen Romei

The titular monkey is a wind-up toy that beats a drum.

less than 2 min read

9:58AMFebruary 20, 2025

“Everybody dies, and that’s life.”

This repeated line in the playfully gory horror-comedy The Monkey, adapted from the 1980 short story by Stephen King, is true enough but what isn’t “normal”, as one character puts it, is how the people die.

American writer-director Oz Perkins flexes his imaginative muscles to deliver outlandish means of awful death. Decapitation and dismemberment are popular, as has ever been the case, but it’s how they happen that is unusual.

The titular monkey is a wind-up toy that beats a drum. The plot unfolds in halves.

In the first, the monkey is owned by teen twins Hal and Bill (Christian Convery in both roles), who soon learn that when that drum rolls hell is unleashed. Their babysitter is the first victim, in a way that will make you rethink going to Teppanyaki restaurants. When the timid Hal asks the monkey to kill his bully brother Bill, he confirms two things: one, the monkey is a murderer; two, it does not take requests.

Theo James and Oz Perkins attend the Los Angeles Premiere Of Neon's The Monkey. Picture: Getty

The second half is set 25 years later in Maine. The estranged brothers (Theo James in both roles) are reunited because it seems the satanic simian, quiet for a while, is back in business.

Tess Degenstein has a scene-stealing cameo as a real estate agent who briefs Hal on all the deaths in the town over the past week. When he notes, “There aren’t any cobras in Maine”, she replies, “Well, there was one.”

This is characteristic of the humour of this thinly-plotted movie: gruesome deaths that you can only laugh at. It’s a comedy first, horror second, unlike Perkins’s 2024 film Longlegs, starring Nicolas Cage, which seeps with dread.

It’s also personal for the director, son of the famous actor Anthony Perkins. His mother, Berry Berenson, was on one of the planes that terrorists crashed into the World Trade Centre on 9/11. He has mentioned the randomness of her death in interviews about this movie.