The Monkey: A Review

This film is based off a Stephen King short story which (unusually for me), I have not read, but I now intend to. The film follows two brothers who accidentally inherit a cursed Monkey toy which has a mind of its own.

Image Credit: Katherine Nicholls

It sets the tone in the first scene with a fairly amusing death, a fellow Cinema goer actually gasped (this actually amused me more than the scene).

I enjoyed the colour pallete of the film, very Retro and I would say the first part of the film is late seventies/early eighties but it eventually moves to 2016 but there was minimum use of modern technology on screen which appealed to me!

Continuing with the retro theme, there was a dream sequence which reminded me of earlier films, some Stopmotion might have been involved.

Partway through, it felt like the film was struggling, but then came an amusing twist involving the older (by three minutes) brother. It reminded me of classic Villian origin stories.

One of my favourite moments was the final scene, which involves the younger brother and his son driving through the mostly dead town, (quite literally thanks to the monkey), it appealed to my silly sense of humour.

Gore wise, there are certainly some strong visuals, the only one that affected me was the wasp scene, I actually gagged a little.

Something that almost disturbed me more, was actually how matter of fact the deaths were portrayed/ responded to, quite stark. It is hard to explain why, but that bothered me more than most of the deaths! It felt like an interesting look into the US in 2016, which is the year in which Donald Trump first won the Presidency.

Overall, it was fairly amusing, not the best horror comedy I have ever watched, but certainly not the worst and I did enjoy it.

My final rating is three out of five toe beans!