The Monkey (2025)

Plot of The Monkey: Bill and Hal are twins, living somewhere in middle America and Bill bullies Hal unmercifully. They are being brought up by their mother, their father having disappeared.  They find a monkey toy, which seems to be a drummer and when they wind it up it beats the drum to the tune of ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside”. Then out with their babysitter at a hibachi restaurant, she is accidentally beheaded by the chef. Back home Hal thinks that if he winds up the monkey it may kill Bill, but when he does so their mother dies of an aneurysm. They go to live with their aunt Ida and uncle Chip, the monkey mysteriously following them. Bill winds it up and as a result Chip dies in a stampede accident.  The twins are distressed and package up the monkey and throw it down a well. Time passes, and 25 years later Hal is engaged in his annual interaction with his son Petey, having been divorced by his wife  when he gets a message from Bill, asking him to drive to the aunt’s house because people are dying strangely, including the aunt, and Bill suspects that the monkey is in action.  It is in action. Bill is winding it up so how can he and it be stopped?

Content: No sex or nudity, or drinking or drug taking. The film opens when a man in uniform tries to pawn a toy monkey and in the discussion with the pawnbroker the toy beats it drum and the pawnbroker is killed by an accidentally fired harpoon, part of a diving display. There after Hal and Bill gradually become aware of the devastating effect of the monkey’s drum beating. After each time it does there is a strange killing, including a woman blowing up due to a swimming pool being electrified and another being shot by a shot gun at close range on opening a cupboard. Hal’s relationship with his son, now a teenager, is likely to come to an end as his ex-wife and new husband intend to adopt him and move away. In the midst of the killings the father and son bond and Bill, who has been winding the monkey and causing mayhem in the town must face them.

A View: The monkey is delightfully creepy and the killings are extremely violent, much in the style of other slasher films such as Final Destination. I did wonder whether somehow, in the original Stephen King story, the monkey’s motivation might have been identified, since none is evident in the film. I had not known that the type of restaurant where the chef stands in front of the guests wielding an extremely sharp knife is a ‘hibachi restaurant’. We saw this outing at the cinema and I remain uncertain as to whether it was worth the ticket price, so it might be better to wait until it is available on line.

Fun Fact: The original monkey which had cymbals was changed to one with a drum because Disney own the one with the cymbals!