The Monkey (Osgood Perkins, 2025, USA/UK/Canada)

The Monkey, Oz Perkin's latest film, marks his second collaboration with Neon after the immensely successful Longlegs (2024). Shot along with Longlegs and a third film (Keeper) in Canada in quick succession, The Monkey marks a turn from Longlegs tonally. This is a horror comedy first and foremost, owing a great deal to the Final Destination franchise. Based on the 1980 story by Stephen King (made famous by its titular monkey being on the cover of King's '85 collection Skeleton Crew), The Monkey only shares a few surface similarities with the story. This is not such a problem, as the story was rather slight to begin with.

Perkins, who re-wrote the script to his liking, takes the central idea of the story and amplifies it (we're all going to die, and we can't control it). Despite not having much to do with the original story, The Monkey feels owed to King in more ways than one. The film was originally supposed to be set in the 1950s with the current period in the 1980s, though Perkins ended up changing this to avoid similarities to It and Stranger Things. There are some indicators of the period, but the film plays fast and loose with time - sometimes it feels like the 1970s, sometimes like the 1980s, and sometimes even the 1950s.

While the film loses some narrative coherence and steam in the third act, the events leading up to the finale are so entertaining that we can largely let the film get away with slips in logic. Perkins delivers here on tone, and there is a meanness and grittiness here that evokes the earliest stories of Stephen King out of his Night Shift collection. There is still an emotional core here, but it is refreshing to see a darker take on King.

7/10