The Monkey 🐵 review

 

A man is drawn back into his family drama, which involves secrets, grisly murders… And a monkey.

This movie is marketed as a regular horror movie, but it’s more of a dark pitch-black comedy/horror movie. There are so many bloody, over-the-top deaths that are both horrifying and hilarious. It’s like Final Destination meets The Evil Dead, but also what if Death were the Three Stooges lol?

Theo James is really good in the movie playing twins, and is really good at making them both distinct and both sympathetic and kind of not the same time… It makes him interesting characters, and you’re not sure where the story will go.

I like the actor who plays the main character.

son (Pete) He’s good about playing but never seems annoying or too mopey, plus he’s really good at humor. This actor (Colin O’Brien) has a bright future ahead of him.

Tatiana Maslany is an actress I like, who is in the film. I wish you’d been in more, but she knows how to ride that line between heartfelt, tragic, and funny at the same time, plus that girl knows how to scream.

Osgood Perkins is one of those directors who knows how to ride the line between artistic, dreamlike imagery while also having good pacing and down-to-earth, funny characters, so it’s the best of both worlds.

The beginning of the film takes place in the late 90s or very early 2000s, and they did a really good job of capturing the vibe and fashion of the time.

I like the design of the monkey; I don’t know if they designed it specifically for the movie, but it’s definitely memorable and looks… Bananas 🍌

I like the use of color and cinematography, it was very splashy and colorful.

This has nothing to do with the movie, but the aunts house in the film was in Dirk Gently Season 2, Elijah Wood was the star of that show, and has Elijah Wood in a small role in the movie, so that’s a funny coincidence.

There is this side character who is funny and has a very distinct look, but their overall role in the stories is kind of just to accomplish two things and… That’s about it… Like, the character's inclusion feels more like plot convenience than anything else, but the actor brings some nice levity to the role, so I enjoyed the character; he was a barrel of laughs lol.

Also, there is a post-credit scene… It has nothing to do with the actual movie but just sets up the director's next film, which looks interesting. That’ll be a cool thing for directors to do, revealing the teasers for the next movie at the end of their last movie.

The monkey is very straightforward; either people are trying to destroy a monkey or are killed by a monkey in very over-the-top, funny, and bloody ways. If any of that sounds appealing, then I definitely think you’ll go bananas 🍌 for the film. I give it four stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️