The Monkey is a perfect mix of comedy and splatter

Two horror films, each very different in nature and intent, are hitting theaters this year, confronting us with an unavoidable and undeniable event: death. Not just death, but its foreboding and, at times, its strangeness. On one side, we have the blockbuster version, one that laughs in the face of death with the triumphant return of a saga like Final Destination, which will hit theaters this spring with its sixth chapter, Bloodlines. On the other, there’s the literary pursuit, flipping through pages that, in the horror genre, always and once again lead back to him, the man of fear, Mr. Stephen King. This time, it’s his short story The Monkey that gets adapted, taken from the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, which compiles stories the author wrote over the preceding years. Like Final Destination, but with the finesse of someone who approaches horror not as a money-making machine but as a belonging universe, King’s story also deals with the persistent presence of death, especially through a certain kind of phantasmagoria. The monkey in the title is in fact a toy—though it’s best not to call it that—that’s ready to bring down its scythe every time it is activated. Jingle, drumroll, and someone, somewhere not precisely specified (though close to where the object is located), dies a gruesome and improbable death. It’s inevitable, there’s no escape. You crank the handle, make the sign of the cross, and hope the victim is exactly who you had in mind. Though it never is.

In The Monkey, in fact, you can’t choose who the “curse” will fall upon. And that’s when the real trouble begins. Just like Final Destination, the film marking the triumphant return of Oz Perkins after Longlegs deals with the randomness of events that, in some way, could be avoided. And which, most importantly, will happen regardless of what the characters want. Like the popcorn movie series, King’s adaptation also uses its most absurd kills as a vehicle to entertain the viewer. To scare them and show how absurd life can be—but most of all, it aims to shock and amaze an audience that should leave the theater terrified, yet also somewhat distracted by the madness that has just unfolded on screen. And perhaps it’s this very sense of repetition that gradually slows down the pace of The Monkey, making the scenes certainly original on a case-by-case basis, but repetitive and thus less surprising with each death, relying mostly on that narrative device and rarely deviating from it.

A work far from the Longlegs that became a true media sensation in 2024, with a promotional campaign as intriguing as the film’s mystical and satanic aura, where Nicolas Cage’s face wasn’t revealed until viewers were inside the theater. This time, it’s a double Theo James who takes the lead, playing both Bill and Hal, twins who inherited the monkey from their late father and, over the years, lost contact with each other. When the malevolent presence of the keepsake begins to haunt their old house again, the two are forced to reunite, digging up past regrets and trying to figure out how to stop the disasters caused by the “toy.” Much more classic, linear, and less inspired than Longlegs, The Monkey is a divertissement that does justice to Stephen King’s work, but it can’t be counted among his most surprising adaptations. It’s a story that is amusing in its own way—and it’s funny even to say that, considering the gruesome deaths that await the characters in the film—that uses irony as another tool to approach horror. With a reflection on family, and how, in the end, maybe it’s best not to be too harsh with your siblings because even evil is something that can be inherited—and it’s best to steer clear of it.