phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2025

The Monkey



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2025
Runtime: 1h 38m
Country: USA, UK, Canada
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror
Plot Summary: When twin brothers Bill and Hal find their father's old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths start. The siblings decide to throw the toy away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Darkly, darkly comic. Essentially a comedy version of The Strangers, or a bloodier Final Destination. Sometimes horrible things happen to people, often for no good reason, and death comes for everyone. You're just going to have to live with that. The monkey almost functions like the force in It Follows: You're not ever going to get rid of it, but you can at least learn to live with it on your own terms.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

All of the personal details about Oz Perkins add to the appreciation of this clever flick, but it's also a film that feels like it pushes back against the "explainer" culture of elevated horror. Yes, it's about the filmmaker's mother–how could it not be?–but it's also about the random cruelty of the world, one that can steal a mother from a child as easily as turning a key in the back of a toy monkey. Sometimes even death needs a laugh.


Katie Rife
Grade: B - Oz Perkins tells a gory cosmic joke with The Monkey

Tatiana Maslany co-stars in the flashback scenes as Hal and Bill's mom, whose monologue about death—"Everybody dies. That's life," she tells them after their babysitter is beheaded in front of them at a Benihana-type restaurant—epitomizes its ultra-black comedy. King isn't necessarily known as a hilarious writer, but Perkins twists The Monkey into a sardonic middle finger. Part Gremlins and part Final Destination, it's a vicious little horror-comedy whose punchline is that we're all walking around with our heads in an invisible guillotine whose blade could fall at any moment. Probably while we're doing something embarrassing.