The Monkey (2025)

IMDb 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.

Directed by Osgood Perkins. Stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, and Christian Convery.

The Monkey is a horror movie about two twin brothers who  find a wind-up toy monkey that belonged to their absent father. They discover that winding up the monkey causes someone to die in a horrifying freak accident, anything from being trampled while camping to accidentally setting your head on fire. They dispose of the monkey, only to find out years later that it's come back to wreak havoc again. By far the most engaging part of this movie is the ridiculous over the top deaths. People are exploding left and right and covering the people around them in blood and body parts, at least once it surprised me into laughing out loud. The dialogue in the film, though, is an uncomfortable attempt at comedy that never lands for me, so anytime when we aren't seeing ludicrous gory death scenes is dull at best and eye-rolling and cringy at worst. There is one more exception: the scene in which our lead character interacts with his ex's new boyfriend who wants to adopt his son. This character is played by Elijah Wood as a hilarious fatherhood guru, and there's some good lines in that sequence that gave me glimpses into what the movie was trying to do and how well it could have worked. The script overall needed some more passes to bring out the humor in the moments when no one is dying. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Monkey (2025)

📊 Ranked #2349/4032 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

beat Anna (#2011 → #2129)

lost to The Lady Vanishes (#1005 → #1008)

lost to About Elly (#1515 → #1516)

lost to Wet Hot American Summer (#1775 → #1767)

lost to The Aristocats (#1909 → #1890)

beat Flightplan (#1949 → #2542)

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (#1914 → #1871)

lost to Native Son (#1931 → #1461)

lost to Rosemary's Baby (#1941 → #1930)

lost to Evita (#1944 → #1443)

beat Yellow Submarine (#1946 → #2587)

lost to Bound (#1945 → #1934)