The Monkey

Our Verdict on The Monkey

This review contains detailed plot analysis and reveals key story elements including the film's ending.

Osgood Perkins followed up the surprise smash Longlegs, one of 2024's most talked-about horror films, by doing the last thing anyone expected. He made a comedy. Well, sort of. The Monkey is technically a horror-comedy adapted from Stephen King's 1980 short story about a cursed cymbal-banging toy monkey that kills anyone nearby when its key is wound. But calling it a "horror-comedy" undersells how weird this movie actually is. It's closer to a splatstick Rube Goldberg machine: elaborate, absurd death sequences played for shocked laughter rather than genuine terror. Think Final Destination directed by someone who grew up watching Evil Dead and Monty Python in equal measure. On a $10 to 11 million budget, it has grossed nearly $69 million worldwide, confirming that Perkins now has legitimate box office pull and that audiences were hungry for something that doesn't take itself too seriously.

The culture war angle here is minimal, and that's a good thing. The Monkey is refreshingly unconcerned with checking ideological boxes. It's a movie about a toy monkey that makes people die in absurd ways, and it commits fully to that premise without stopping to lecture you about anything. For conservative audiences burned by Hollywood bait-and-switches, this one is safe. It's not enlightened. It's not preachy. It's a cursed monkey movie that delivers exactly what it promises.

The film opens in 1999 with a cold open that immediately sets the tone. Captain Petey Shelburn (Adam Scott, in a brief but effective cameo) walks into an antiques shop trying to return a wind-up toy monkey. Before he can finish the transaction, the monkey's drum activates, triggering a chain reaction that ends with a harpoon gun disemboweling the shop owner. Petey disappears shortly afterward, abandoning his wife Lois (Tatiana Maslany) to raise their twin sons, Hal and Bill, alone.

The twins discover the monkey among their father's belongings. Every time someone winds its key, the drum plays, and someone nearby dies in a spectacularly gruesome fashion. Their babysitter Annie is decapitated by a hibachi chef. (Yes, really.) When Hal, who is being bullied at school by a pack of mean girls, winds the key hoping it will kill his brother Bill, their mother Lois suffers an aneurysm and dies instead. The boys seal the monkey in a box and throw it down a well, hoping to bury the curse.

Twenty-five years later, Theo James takes over the dual role. Adult Hal is a paranoid, traumatized shell of a man, estranged from his own son Petey and his ex-wife, who plans to let her new husband Ted (Elijah Wood, in another single-scene cameo) adopt the boy. Adult Bill is something else entirely: he's retrieved the monkey from the well and has been deliberately winding the key to kill random people, furious that Hal once tried to use it against him.

The brothers' confrontation is the film's emotional core. Bill demands that Hal's son Petey take over the task of perpetually winding the key, keeping the curse active but controlled. Hal refuses. The monkey, as if sentient, drums uncontrollably, triggering mass death across the entire town. Ricky, a local obsessed with the monkey, forces Petey at gunpoint to retrieve it, only to be killed by a swarm of wasps. Bill's final, desperate attempt to force the monkey to drum without winding the key backfires. The brothers reconcile over their shared grief for their dead mother. Then the monkey beats its drum one last time, and Bill is decapitated by a bowling ball engraved with Lois' name.

The film ends with Hal and Petey driving through the devastated town, accepting their roles as the monkey's keepers and vowing never to let the key be wound again. A pale, black-eyed horseman rides past them on the road, a reference to the Pale Horseman of the Apocalypse, acknowledging their burden. Hal suggests they go dancing, something their mother loved. It's a surprisingly tender ending to a film that spent 90 minutes gleefully killing people in the most ridiculous ways imaginable.

Trope	Severity (1 to 5)	Authenticity	Centrality	Weighted Score
Girl Bully Gang (gender-swapped bullying)	2	Low (1.4)	Low (0.5)	1.4
Caricatured Young Priest (religion as joke)	2	Low (1.4)	Low (0.5)	1.4
Dysfunctional White Male Leads	3	High (0.7)	High (1.8)	3.8
Absent/Deadbeat Father Figure	3	High (0.7)	Moderate (1.0)	2.1
Children Exposed to Adult Language/Violence	2	High (0.7)	Moderate (1.0)	1.4
Marriage as Disposable (Hal's divorce)	2	High (0.7)	Low (0.5)	0.7

Trope	Severity (1 to 5)	Authenticity	Centrality	Weighted Score
Brother Reconciliation / Family Bond	4	High (0.7)	High (1.8)	5.0
Consequences for Playing God (cursed object)	4	High (0.7)	High (1.8)	5.0
Father-Son Reconnection (Hal and Petey)	3	High (0.7)	High (1.8)	3.8
Personal Responsibility / Owning the Burden	3	High (0.7)	Moderate (1.0)	2.1
Good vs. Evil (supernatural moral order)	3	High (0.7)	Moderate (1.0)	2.1
Maternal Legacy and Sacrifice	3	High (0.7)	Moderate (1.0)	2.1
Small-Town America Setting	2	High (0.7)	Low (0.5)	0.7

• Osgood Perkins. Son of Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates in Psycho). Built his reputation on atmospheric horror (The Blackcoat's Daughter, Longlegs) before pivoting to dark comedy with The Monkey. Also appears in the film as Uncle Chip. No political activism on record. A genre craftsman.
• James Wan (Atomic Monster). The architect behind The Conjuring, Saw, Insidious, and Aquaman franchises. Wan is a commercial horror powerhouse with no known political agenda. He produces what audiences want to watch.
• Neon. Known for prestige and indie horror (Parasite, Longlegs). Their involvement gives the film art-house credibility alongside its crowd-pleasing genre appeal.
• Theo James delivers a committed dual performance as the estranged Shelburn twins. Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk, Orphan Black) appears briefly as their mother Lois. Adam Scott and Elijah Wood show up for memorable single-scene cameos. Christian Convery handles the heavy lifting as young Hal and Bill.

Osgood Perkins grew up inside Hollywood horror royalty. His father Anthony Perkins defined the genre with his portrayal of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). The younger Perkins started as an actor (his most recognizable role: "Dorky David" in Legally Blonde) before transitioning to writing and directing.

• A slow-burn, ice-cold horror film about two girls stranded at a Catholic boarding school during winter break while something demonic moves in the background. Atmospheric, patient, and genuinely unsettling. No political content. Pure craft.

• A Netflix-distributed ghost story that's more mood piece than narrative. Critically divisive for its glacial pace. Again, no political content.

• A visually striking reimagining of the fairy tale that leans into folk horror aesthetics. Mild feminist undercurrents (Gretel as the protagonist making her own choices) but nothing that amounts to a political statement.

• Perkins' breakout hit. A serial killer thriller starring Nicolas Cage that became a genuine cultural event, grossing $108 million worldwide on a modest budget. The film deals with Satanic themes and religious imagery but treats them as horror elements, not ideological statements. Longlegs proved Perkins could deliver both critical acclaim and commercial success.

• A hard left turn from Longlegs' icy dread into madcap, splatstick comedy horror. Shows a filmmaker willing to take risks and refuse to repeat himself. The tonal shift surprised audiences and critics alike.

Perkins is a genre filmmaker. Full stop. His films are about atmosphere, dread, and craft. He has no public political profile and his filmography contains no ideological through-line beyond a fascination with evil, fate, and the supernatural. He's one of the few working directors in horror who seems genuinely uninterested in using the genre as a Trojan horse for political messaging.

Here's the honest take for our audience: The Monkey is one of the least politically charged studio horror releases in recent memory. That alone makes it notable in 2025.

The "woke" elements are marginal. There's a scene early on where young Hal is bullied by a gang of girls instead of boys. It feels a little forced, but the film seems to use it for the added humiliation factor rather than to make some statement about gender. A young Latino priest delivers two funeral sermons that are played entirely for laughs, making religion the butt of the joke. Every white male character is some shade of dysfunctional. But none of these choices feel ideological. They feel like a horror-comedy writer making tonal choices for dark laughs, not pushing an agenda.

The traditional elements are stronger and more central to the film's actual story. The core emotional arc is about two brothers who were torn apart by trauma and guilt, reconciling before it's too late. Hal's journey to reconnect with his son Petey is the film's emotional spine. The cursed monkey functions as a straightforward moral framework: there are consequences for playing with forces beyond your control, and running from your problems only makes them worse. The ending, where Hal accepts responsibility as the monkey's keeper and chooses to be present for his son, is genuinely moving.

The supernatural element carries an implicit moral order: evil exists, it's real, and it demands respect. The Pale Horseman in the final scene is a nod to biblical apocalyptic imagery, and the film treats it with weight, not irony. This is a movie that believes in curses, in evil, in the idea that some things are not meant to be toyed with. That's a fundamentally conservative cosmology, even if the film never announces it as such.

Stephen King's name on the source material will turn off some conservatives. King is one of the most vocal anti-Trump, anti-Republican voices in American entertainment, and his Twitter feed is a nonstop stream of progressive commentary. But Perkins' adaptation barely resembles King's original story, and the film doesn't carry any of King's personal politics. You're safe.

Bottom line: The Monkey is a fun, gory, surprisingly emotional horror-comedy with minimal political baggage. It won't offend you. It might even surprise you. Go see it.

is rated for "strong bloody violent content throughout, language, and brief drug use."

• This is where the film earns its R rating and then some. Death sequences are elaborate, graphic, and played for dark comedy. Characters are decapitated, disemboweled by harpoon, trampled by horses, electrocuted in a swimming pool, swarmed by wasps, hit by bowling balls, and more. The gore is extreme but cartoonish in presentation, closer to Evil Dead than Saw. Still, the sheer volume and creativity of the kills will be too much for younger viewers.
• Frequent profanity throughout, including from the child actors. The young twins use language that would make most parents wince.
• Minimal drug references.
• No sex scenes or nudity.
• Despite being a horror film, The Monkey is more funny than frightening. The cursed monkey toy creates unease, and the Pale Horseman in the final scene is genuinely creepy. But the comedic tone undercuts sustained terror.
• The death of the twins' mother and the brothers' eventual reconciliation carry real emotional weight. The ending is bittersweet.

The biggest concern here is the graphic violence. The deaths are creative and outrageous, but they are also very bloody. The comedic framing may actually make it harder for younger teens to process the violence appropriately. If your teenager can handle the Final Destination films or Evil Dead, they'll be fine here. If not, wait a couple years. The child characters using strong language is worth noting but is minor compared to the violence.

Woke Tropes & Content Analysis

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Girl Bully Gang (Gender-Swapped Bullying)	2	Low	Low	1.4
Caricatured Young Priest (Religion as Punchline)	2	Low	Low	1.4
Dysfunctional White Male Leads	3	High	High	3.8
Absent/Deadbeat Father Figure	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Children Exposed to Adult Language/Violence	2	High	Moderate	1.4
Marriage as Disposable (Hal's Divorce)	2	High	Low	0.7
TOTAL WOKE				10.8

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Brother Reconciliation / Family Bond	4	High	High	5
Consequences for Playing God (Cursed Object Morality)	4	High	High	5
Father-Son Reconnection (Hal and Petey)	3	High	High	3.8
Personal Responsibility / Owning the Burden	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Good vs. Evil / Supernatural Moral Order	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Maternal Legacy and Sacrifice	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Small-Town America Setting	2	High	Low	0.7
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				20.8

Score Margin: +10 TRAD

Content Breakdown

Is The Monkey Safe for Kids?