The Monkey (2025)

This takes for ever to get going and once it does, it’s really an unoriginal semi-comedic horror drama centred around yet another not-so-menacing puppet. This time, it’s squabbling brothers “Hal” and “Bill” who discover an old hat box after their father dies and in it is what looks like a toy monkey. They wind it up and next thing, their babysitter is no more and that’s the just the start of it’s malevolence. Putting two and two together, they decide it’s best to drop the thing down a well and get on with growing up. Scoot on years later and now “Hal” (Theo James) has a son of his own “Petey” (Colin O’Brien) and is trying to rebuild some bridges with him after his marriage collapsed. Equally estranged is his twin, so he’s not impressed when, out of the blue, he is called and told their aunt has died. He now has to drag the reluctant lad along to the home they grew up in and guess what is in the wardrobe? At times it’s quite funny, but I’m not sure how intentional that is as James delivers a seriously flat performance and the epitome of sibling rivalries involves a frankly risible degree of menace. It’s not that the idea is rubbish, though it is derivative, it’s that the acting and writing are poor and the scenarios - familial discord, new stepdad (Elijah Wood) etc. are all just too predictable and it provides virtually nothing new over a lacklustre one hundred minutes. I could certainly think of a few good uses for the chimp, though!

'The Monkey' has a great concept and I enjoyed the wacky nature of it, I did almost lose interest in the human characters towards the end though. That isn't the best sign given the short 90 minute run time, but the end does come when desired so that saves it. Theo James is pretty good in this, for sure the most I've liked seeing him. I haven't seen him act much (five films now), my main thought of him is actually with human excrement up his nose (yep) in 'The Inbetweeners Movie'... hopefully this performance will override that memory (it won't). The gore shown for all the titular character's escapades is very cool and rather creative to be honest, the 'freak accident' angle is a fun one to watch play out onscreen. Everything with the red-eyed fellow is definitely what makes this movie, as it ought to really. A stronger overall story and I probably would've loved it.