Monkey See, Monkey Don't: Avoid This Flop🥁🐒

🍌 this movie sucked major bananas... 🍌

NOTE: A very special thank you to The Loft and NEON for graciously hosting this event to the University of Arizona community <3

Production Company: NEON

Release Date: 02/21/2025

Rating: R

Runtime: 98 minutes

The Monkey from The Monkey

"Brother... the monkey that likes killing our family... it's back"

Under two weeks ago,  Carlos and I had the displeasure of seeing Osgood Perkin's The Monkey. From the minds of prolific writer Stephen King, horror icon James Wan, and director Osgood Perkins (of Longlegs fame), comes the latest adaptation of a beloved horror novella -- adapted from King's 1980 short story, "The Monkey." The film follows Hal Shelburn, played by Four of Divergent fame, first as an adolescent who discovers the titular monkey, then as a reserved adult/deadbeat dad haunted by it. Other characters include Petey, Hal's teenage son, Bill, Hal's twin brother, and Lois, Hal and Bill's mother, played by the uber-talented Tatiana Maslany. With Wan, King, and Perkins attached to the project, as well as a stacked cast, I’ll admit I was pretty curious about the film, despite the very unfortunate trailer. Let’s just say what you see is what you get – and nothing more.

Unfortunately for the trifling trio, the dialogue landed too heavily, jokes were hit-or-miss, and the monkey was simply not compelling enough to warrant the 100-minute runtime. According to MD Micah, The Monkey is a modern-day Rocky Horror and will develop a cult following. Until then, I'm free to bash its monkey brains in with a pink bowling ball:

Plot

Have you ever heard this one? A tween/teen boy discovers a haunted toy/idol, tries to get rid of it, and fails, leading to death, chaos, and calamity. You have? Us too.

The Monkey touted a weak, overused plot, and a weak metaphor for generational trauma that ultimately fell short. After unsuccessfully attempting to destroy and/or throw the monkey away to prevent further deaths, Hal and Bill throw the monkey down a well, leading to a 25-year period of dormancy -- a plot point closer to a plot hole, in my opinion. When the monkey has the power to teleport and kill anyone in a close range, if its key is turned, why does it wait over two decades to reappear? The film's protagonist, Hal, distances himself from his ex-wife and son, Petey, to prevent them from experiencing the evil of the monkey and from Hal himself – another confusing aspect of the movie! If you had witnessed an evil toy monkey kill your babysitter, your mother, and countless others, would you choose to settle down and start a family, only to abandon said family? Wildly irresponsible and nonsensical. A very Stephen King trope found here is the time jump, where the characters begin as young adults and grow to adulthood throughout the movie (see The Shining/Dr. Sleep and It). Yet, the characters do not mature past the mentality of their twelve-year-old selves and behave just as selfishly. The plot, especially the ending, is as transparent and flimsy as cling wrap.

Characters

One question I am left asking after watching this movie is “Why should I care about any of it?” Bill and Hal have a stupid, brotherly rivalry, which frankly, I did not care about. To be honest, I barely cared about Hal, much less his family. When the heart of a movie rests on the redeemability of the characters, I was shocked with just how unlikeable they all were. Perhaps, the only redeemable character of the film is Petey, who barely feels like a real person – straddling the line between feeling angry at his lying, absentee father and being very nonchalant about the murderous monkey. I would be much angrier with my dad if he abandoned me because of his fear of a wind-up monkey only to put me in the same house with it!!! Additionally, there is no character growth, development, or change. No resolution, for anyone, just a hot mess!

Speaking of The Monkey, don’t go into this thinking you’ll see this monkey running around doing any of the killing — no. The titular murderous critter is absent for approximately half of the movie and some change, doing, oh yeah, NOTHING. Killing from a distance, aura farming when necessary, then sending (literal) notes to the audience letting it know it will be absent until the movie's end. Someone tell this monkey to stop monkeying around and show up for its own movie. 

Ranking the characters:

1. Elijah Wood’s character (30-second cameo and he was out!)

2. Petey Shelburn

3. Horseman of death

4. Babysitter Annie

5. The mom (forgot her name)

6. The wife (also forgot her name)

7. The cheerleaders

8. The vaping manager 

9. The cop’s son 

10. Aunt Ida

11. Uncle Chip (ok Osgood Perkins cameo)

12. Hal Shelburn (extremely unlikeable)

13. Bill Shelburn (somehow more unlikeable)

Dialogue

Dare I say it, the dialogue of The Monkey was the weakest point of the film. Parts of it could be described as humorous, but far too often the movie relied on repetitive or crude jokes that just pissed us off. Now, don’t get us wrong. We are by no means prudes. However, we can recognize when certain lines of dialogue are appropriate, and when lines of dialogue repeat over and over again like the 64 horses that trampled Uncle Chip to death. By the end of the movie, and the painstaking adult interactions between Hal and Bill, I felt a bit like Uncle Chip's chopped-up body.

SFX

Honestly, disappointing special effects. House of 1000 Corpses did it first and better. Genuinely, splatterhouse at its worst. The Monkey does a weak job of bringing unoriginal deaths to the screen -- many of which occurred offscreen. The monkey kills and keeps killing, so long as someone keeps turning his key. For the novel concept, The Monkey had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the movie squandered this potential again and again with schlocky deaths. Not even funny enough to be worth witnessing...

Conclusion

To conclude, we have almost completely forgotten about this movie yet it is embedded in our minds. Hear me out: I liked Longlegs, but it was simply unsatisfying. Likewise, The Monkey left me wanting more and extremely bitter thinking about how unsatisfying it was. It’s like going to a new restaurant that people keep talking about, ordering the same dish you would always get, and the dish turns out soulless and bland. They certainly tried hard to generate an interesting film, but ultimately, it lacked intrigue and memorability.

No monkey business here: The Monkey was rather disappointing…

Palate Cleanser

watch these horror bangers instead…

The Faculty - Peak Elijah Wood and 1990s paranoia

The Fly - Watching a man fall apart has never looked so good

Nope - A better movie involving a vicious monkey and sibling dynamic

The Substance - Oscar winner, pookie

Rating: ⋆⋆/⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

Reviewer Names: Sophia Troetel & Carlos Montes

Date of Review: March 5, 2025