“The Monkey”, one of the two films from Osgood Perkins during this year, is a creepy film about one nasty toy monkey and several people who unfortunately happens to get involved with it. As striking us hard with several moments as shocking and horrific as those death scenes in Final Destination flicks, the movie also has some naughty fun with the growing sense of dread around its main characters, and the result is another interesting horror film from Perkins.

Based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King, the movie mainly revolves around the troubled relationship between Hal and Bill Shelburn, two twin brothers played by Christian Convery at first and then Theo James later. On one day in 1999, Hal and Bill rummage those old stuffs left by their father who suddenly left them and their mother for no apparent reason some time ago, and then they find a box containing a toy monkey. It seems all they have to do is winding its key a bit and then seeing what it will do next, but, of course, this subsequently leads to a terrible incident which will make you think twice about going to a certain type of restaurant.

Once he comes to see what this malevolent toy monkey can do as beating its drum, Hal finds himself considering winding its key again. Having frequently been bullied by his older brother, he often wishes to kill Bill, so he eventually makes the toy monkey beating its drum. However, he belatedly comes to realize that it chooses its victim randomly rather than following its owner’s wish, and he and his older brother come to have another traumatic incident.

Needless to say, Hal tries to get rid of the toy monkey, but, not so surprisingly, he only comes to see that it will never go away no matter how much he tries. In the end, after confiding to Bill about what it can do, he and Bill decide to throw it away to the bottom of an abandoned well, and it seems that they are finally free from whatever may be caused by the monkey toy.

However, even after more than 20 years later, Hal still finds himself still under his traumatic memories of the toy monkey and all those horrible incidents caused by that. He married, but then he divorced his wife, and he is also not so particularly close to their adolescent son Petey (Colin O’Brien). In fact, Petey is not very willing to spend time with his father although that is recommended by his mother’s current husband, who is broadly played by Elijah Wood. Incidentally, I happened to watch Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) at a local movie theater, so Wood’s brief but amusing appearance in “The Monkey” reminds me again of how much he has advanced as a talented actor since that point.

Anyway, as Hal tries to spend some good time with Petey, there comes a sudden call from Bill. It seems that the monkey toy returns and then causes another terrible death, and Bill wants Hal to check whether it really comes back to haunt them again. Needless to say, Hal is reluctant at first, but he eventually agrees to look for the monkey toy, while not telling anything to his son.

Around that narrative point, Perkins’ adapted screenplay goes further as steadily building up the sense of dread on the screen, and we surely get a series of truly gruesome moments of death. I particularly liked the one which will probably make you hesitate to jump into a swimming pool, and I was also amused by a certain grim place filled with several fatal traps – and how one of them leads to an expected payoff moment in the end.

Meanwhile, the movie also shows some surprising amount of seriousness just like Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s “Final Destination Bloodlines” (2025). In both movies, death feels quite unstoppable and inescapable to say the least no matter how much their main characters struggle in one way or another, and “The Monkey” is relatively grimmer as Hal comes to face his longtime dread, trauma, and guilt along the story. While still feeling guilty about what he inadvertently caused, he becomes more traumatized and despaired due to his fateful association with the monkey toy, and we come to care about his plight more even while having some dark laugh from all those deaths happening around him.

The movie becomes a bit too preposterous during its last act, but it still works the effective dual performance by Theo James, who demonstrates his acting skill a lot here in here this film. Besides ably going back and forth between his two contrasting characters, he did a good job of illustrating the pain and trauma shared by them, and he is also flawlessly connected with young performer Christian Convery, who holds his own place well during the early part of the film. In case of several supporting performers in the film, they are mostly limited by their rather thin characters, but Tatiana Maslany and Adam Scott leave some impression during their short appearance, and Colin O’Brien is also solid as Hal’s teenage son.

Like “Longlegs” (2024), “The Monkey” is a more accessible work from Perkins compared to his previous arthouse horror films such as “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” (2016) and “Gretel & Hansel” (2020). While it is less subtle in comparison, the movie still provides a fair share of creepiness as you can expect from him, and you may chuckle a bit as appreciating an unexpected moment of acceptance at the end of the story. After all, who can possibly escape death?