A Stephen King Story Goes Apeshit in ‘The Monkey’
The latest Stephen King adaptation The Monkey is here, and the usual tropes we’ve come to know and still devour are fiendishly present. There’s the preteen kids who encounter an evil force, a retro setting, and of course, lots of blood and gore.
Some millennials might be hit especially hard by the forced realization that 1999 is indeed retro, but The Monkey has a feature that King adaptations generally lack - a sense of humor, one that Sam Raimi would likely approve of. It’s refreshing given that many adaptations of King’s work feature a kind of stone-faced seriousness which can only be penetrated unintentionally.
The Monkey, on the other hand, decides to see the humor in a world that can feel like an endless cycle of violence, isolation, and doomscrolling, because is there any kind of scrolling now? Maybe familial reconnection can even be salvaged among the ashes along with some fun, if only because you’re still alive to laugh and find the joy in the fact that at least some of your loved ones remain intact.
If that’s an odd, twisted sense of optimism, it feels right at home for a 2025 adaption of the horror master’s work. At least this terror can be traced directly to a source, the titular monkey, one of the creepiest on-screen toys the genre has featured. Having not personally been a fan of Longlegs, the most recent horror film Osgood Perkins wrote and directed, I found the change of pace from such a talented director reassuring.
The boys at the center of it all are twins (Christian Convery) who are forced to grapple with the evil toy thanks to their father (Adam Scott), who fails in his own attempt to destroy it and disappears, inadvertently passing it down to his sons: gentle, passive Hal, and mean-spirited Bill. After the toy causes the death of their relatives, including their mother (Tatiana Maslany, being memorable per usual), the kids throw it down a well in the hopes that some things will stay buried.
We all know how often that wish comes true, and 25 years later it resurfaces, with the adult Hal (Theo James) now estranged from coworkers and family alike, including his own child Petey (Colin O'Brien), who he is now on the verge of being denied even partial custody of. After years of holding himself back from Petey for fear that the evil he experienced will likewise be inherited by him, the gruesome events send them on a twisted road trip of sorts, forcing Hal to face his past, his brother, and reveal the true nature of his life and legacy to Petey.
Some (in fact much) of it is predictable, but the ways various characters are done away with sure aren’t. In another director’s hands it could be cliche and sadistic, but Osgood manages to center connection and trauma, along with some truly funny dialogue. If character development isn’t given as much attention, well, audiences are still well compensated for their time.
Grade: B+
