The Monkey (2025) Dir: Osgood Perkins

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My main reason for wanting to watching this brutal-looking horror film was because it was directed by Osgood Perkins, who made 2024's 'Longlegs'; a film that I had absolutely loved. Based on the short story by Stephen King, I wasn't quite expecting this to be as good as the aforementioned 'Longlegs', but I was still very much intrigued by apparent absurdity it possessed, which I had seen snippets of floating around the film community.

I loved the opening titles, brief though they were - they felt very spaghetti western in style, and stayed with me long after the film had come to an end. In fact, I'd say I enjoyed the whole soundtrack, honestly - it really was enjoyable. The practical effects were another aspect I wanted to highlight, mostly because of how absurdly fun and gory they were. The film doesn't shy away from being gross, but does so in such a way that it was genuinely quite funny. The film kinda ripped off the 'Final Destination' films, but I can't pretend like I didn't enjoy the absurdity of it all.

The whole film was all a little bit silly. In fact, it was very silly. It was borderline stupid, at points, but I had fun, so I shouldn't complain too much. The writing was haphazard, the storyline was mediocre, but the entertainment value just about made up for it. If it hadn't been so funny, I'd have ripped this film to shreds a lot more. On a different day, I'd have found the poor screenplay a lot more irritating, but I was glad to find the crude violence and comedy to be so humorous.

Theo James looked like he was having an absolute blast playing the two main roles in this film. His silly facial expressions were hilarious, and I thought that his delivery of certain lines of dialogue was very amusing. Christian Convery does a decent job of portraying the younger versions of James' characters, and there was a definite familiarity in how they played the two roles.

Tatiana Maslany was the show-stealer for me, though. I was extremely entertained by her comedic chops, and the film was simply better when she was on-screen. I will also mention the likes of Colin O'Brien, Adam Scott, and Elijah Wood, who had small but very memorable appearances in the film. Wood's was an especially surprising and amusing little cameo, which had me laughing a lot.

Overall, this was an interesting one to review, in some respects, because of how differently I felt about the writing and the visual effects. I think I would say that I was a little disappointed by the overall quality of the film, but the practical nature of the splatter horror was admittedly still pretty entertaining. This definitely wasn't a film for the purests, but it sure was fun. I don't know how desperate I'd be to watch it again, however, which may be a more damning indictment of the film than all of my other criticisms.