The Monkey (2025) Review: A Genre Act That Drops the Banana

Imagine a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The audience gasps—until the rabbit starts cracking jokes before biting off the magician’s finger. That’s The Monkey.

The Monkey (2025) Movie Poster

It sets you up for one thing, then introduces something entirely different, and before you can even attempt to breathe and process, it's already moved onto the next setup. The film constantly bounces between eerie psychological horror and absurdly dark comedy, never sticking to one genre, giving the audience whiplash. This push-and-pull dynamics keep the audience on their toes, not in a way horror genres typically do, but rather in a manner that makes you wonder if the confusion is deliberate or merely sloppy storytelling.

There’s a moment in The Monkey where Hal (Theo James) is at his Aunt Ida's (Sarah Levy) house looking for the monkey with a real estate agent, Barbara (Tess Degenstein). Barbara struggles to find the right key to open the door; the tension is thick, the edit cuts are quick, and the score hums with a sense of inescapable doom. The camera lingers on the door knob, the hands turns the knob and Barbara is greeted with shotgun to the face. Hal is covered in blood, and Barbara. It’s pure horror. Then, just as the dread tightens its grip, Hal drops a line so unexpectedly absurd that the audience lets out a confused chuckle. The film doesn’t pause to acknowledge the tonal shift—it barrels ahead, seamlessly blending the serious with the ridiculous. And that, in a nutshell, is The Monkey (2025): a film so caught in its identity crisis that it leaves you wondering whether you just watched a horror film, a dark comedy, or some strange, mismatched fusion of both.

Theo James as Hal Shelburn

Directed by Osgood Perkins, The Monkey takes on Stephen King’s short story of the same name, a tale about a cursed toy monkey that brings death every time it claps its cymbals. In theory, this should be a chilling, psychological horror piece. And in many ways, it is. The cinematography for the film turns dark and heavy on shadows and claustrophobic framing, mirroring the dread that permeates King’s work. The camera waits patiently, allowing tension to breathe, and producing a deliberately unsettling horror experience.

Then, though, there's the dialogue. And the acting. And the strange, off-balance humour that manifests in places where it has no business being. The script isn't above undermining sections of tension with strangely comedic moments, often to the extent where it's impossible to tell whether a scene is meant to be terrifying or satirical. The result? A film that can't seem to pick a lane, instead veering wildly back and forth between horror and dark comedy, inflicting emotional whiplash on its audience.

Christian Convery as Young Bill and Hal Shelburn

At its core, The Monkey is a story about childhood trauma and the inescapable nature of past horrors. Twin brothers Hal & Bill, traumatised by their childhood with the evil toy, have to reconcile the fact that some childhood nightmares don't die—they mature to become adult nightmares. This is a theme King has explored time and again (It, The Shining, Pet Sematary), and The Monkey does, to its credit, lean into this psychological horror aspect.

But does this theme get stronger or weaker because of the film's inconsistent tone? Sometimes the contrast is effective—dark humor can effectively draw attention to the ridiculousness of childhood anxieties that persist into adulthood. However, the majority of the time, it seems as though the movie isn't sure how seriously it wants to take its narrative. Consider the opening sequence. Hal's father, Captain Petey Shellburn (Adam Scott), enters a darkened pawn store with a terrified face, covered in blood and clutching the monkey. Together, the sound design and cinematography create tension. As you prepare yourself and witness the terrible event of the shop owner's death, the movie abruptly shifts to Hal's father using a flamethrower to burn the monkey. At moments, The Monkey seems like a horror movie that keeps tripping over its banana peels, rather than a meticulously crafted story about the loss of innocence.

Tone issues have plagued Stephen King adaptations in the past. There is a Dreamcatcher or The Dark Half for every Shining or Misery—movies that are unable to decide whether they want to be truly scary or self-aware. The Monkey is positioned in the middle. It's not completely horrible, but it's also not entirely in control. We are never sure what kind of movie we are witnessing since Perkins uses one hand to create spooky, atmospheric terror and the other to introduce startling tone swings.

Is The Monkey a success, then? Well, both yes and no. It has the ambiance, the spooky cinematography, and a few truly unnerving scenes that make it a true horror movie. It is a dark comedy with incisive, unexpected humour that occasionally hits the mark. However, as a unified experience? It's a mess. Maybe an amusing mess, but a mess nonetheless.

Perhaps the audience's attempt to understand what they just witnessed—rather than the cursed toy or the eerie creep—is the true horror of The Monkey.

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Behind the Scenes: Osgood Perkins’ Direction in The Monkey (2025)

The Monkey is a film that stays in the mind long after it's finished, thanks to Osgood Perkins' signature slow-burn intensity. Perkins, who is well-known for his careful pacing (The Blackcoat's Daughter), doesn't rush his sequences. Every shot he takes builds a creeping dread as he lets the moments breathe. His use of quiet and well-placed sound cues creates a suspenseful atmosphere throughout the movie. Subtle yet omnipresent, the soundtrack hums like an eerie presence, occupying the pauses between scenes and setting the scene for the terror that follows.

However, Perkins' bold and fun genre-shifting in The Monkey is what really makes the book stand out. He occasionally allows dark comedic moments to elude detection, which totally undermines the suspense he has so painstakingly created. The audience is left feeling both confused and afraid by this odd decision. Yes, this tonal change is startling, but it's also daring, encouraging filmmakers to consider how much they may defy viewers' expectations. Even though it seems like the movie is stumbling over itself, Perkins plays with the genre in The Monkey, bending the boundaries between dark humour and horror to a degree that seems intentional.

Perkins is a filmmaker who thrives on the quiet moments for performers. He uses understated acting, where a little hand gesture or eye movement can convey a lot. This is all about tension that is boiling beneath the surface, therefore there isn't much space for extravagant gestures. Every look has significance, and even the simplest exchange can heighten tension. Perkins makes sure the performers understand that often, the things that are left unsaid and unspoken are just as significant as the things that are expressed.

In terms of filmmaking, Perkins manipulates the experience using sound and pacing, demonstrating once more that silence may have an equal impact to spoken words or visuals. His directing in The Monkey serves as an example of how much a filmmaker can control a film's tone and how such decisions can affect the audience's emotional experience. It's a crazy ride that shows how confident Perkins is in controlling genre and mood, even though it can give some people whiplash.