This Ugly (And Hilarious) Loss of life in ‘The Monkey’ Makes the Horror Comedy an Immediate Should-Watch

Spoiler Alert: Spoilers comply with for The Monkey

Only one 12 months after unleashing the breakout horror smash Longlegs upon the world, Oz Perkins appears poised to make lightning strike twice with The Monkey. And whereas Perkins’ new movie doesn’t match the ominous ambiance of his earlier work, it does enable him to additional showcase his vary as a director and to ship massive laughs alongside his now-signature scares. In actual fact, it’s each bit as a lot a comedy as it’s a horror movie.

Based mostly on a Stephen King quick story of the identical identify, The Monkey revolves round, you guessed it, a wind-up monkey that, each time activated, brings demise upon a random particular person. It’s a premise that, on paper, might simply verge on self-parody, however Perkins properly leans into the absurdity of all of it. On high of that, he delivers what virtually feels destined to be probably the most ugly deaths of 2025, with geysers of blood on display that will even put Completely happy Tree Buddies to disgrace. But one demise specifically is well worth the worth of admission alone.

The Monkey

4
/5

Launch Date

February 19, 2025

Runtime

98 Minutes

Director

Osgood Perkins

Writers

Osgood Perkins

Producers

John Rickard, Natalia Safran, Ali Jazayeri, Chris Ferguson, Fred Berger, Giuliana Bertuzzi, James Wan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, John Friedberg, Jason Material, David Gendron, Michael Clear, Jesse Savath, Peter Luo, Dave Caplan

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Who Dies the Most Ugly Loss of life in ‘The Monkey’?

About halfway by The Monkey, the story jumps ahead 25 years after twins Hal and Invoice Shelburn dropped the titular monkey down a properly and seemingly escaped its curse. But the previous isn’t by with them, because the toy reappears of their outdated home, killing the twins’ aunt Ida after being reactivated. On the ensuing property sale, Ricky (Rohan Campbell of Halloween Ends fame), the son of a police officer, turns into within the monkey and purchases it.

But it surely’s shortly revealed that Ricky was employed by Invoice to retrieve the monkey, as he plans to precise revenge on his brother Hal, blaming him for his or her mom’s mindless demise. Repeated activations have seen the monkey constantly fail to kill Hal, so Invoice hires Ricky to kidnap Hal and his son, Petey. Disguised in his father’s uniform, Ricky coerces Petey into coming into Invoice’s mansion, the place he’s tricked into turning the monkey’s key, as Invoice believes that another person activating the system would be the trick to lastly killing Hal.

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However a special individual turning the important thing makes no distinction, as Hal is spared as soon as once more. As an alternative, Ricky meets a very ugly finish as he waits with Hal in his dad’s police automobile outdoors. A stray bullet from inside the home unintentionally penetrates the automobile’s windshield, as Ricky instantly notices they’re parked subsequent to a conveniently positioned hornet’s nest.

Unexpectedly, a swarm of bees cost out of the hive, by the bullet gap, and straight into Ricky’s mouth, stinging his physique other than the within in a setpiece that pushes the R-rating to its limits. As disturbing as it’s in idea, the setup, payoff, timing, and sheer absurdity additionally make it a hilarious demise, and it appears destined to make quite a lot of Nicolas Cage followers collectively shout “not the bees” in delight.

‘The Monkey’s Greatest Kill Is Bee-utifilly Absurd

A part of what makes The Monkey work so properly is its utter dedication to going as excessive as attainable with out being shackled to any semblance of realism. In one other filmmaker’s fingers, we might very properly see the disturbing issue of a person getting stampeded to demise or a lady being electrocuted in a swimming pool getting performed up. However going full torture porn with kills which might be essentially ridiculous can be a tonal mistake, particularly for a narrative with such a supernatural angle. Since Perkins performs these setpieces like a live-action cartoon, it seems like an invite to snigger on the absurd quantities of blood on display.

Nowhere does this work higher than with Ricky’s demise, which gleefully dispenses all plausibility. From the way in which the complete hive collectively swarms into Ricky’s mouth to the way in which they actually crawl out of his pores and skin, thus making his head appear like an precise beehive, it’s all gloriously foolish in one of the best ways attainable. And whereas one might nitpick on the apparent CGI, even that’s weirdly in step with the movie’s cartoony tone, and it’s arguably much less distracting than a number of the results within the current It duology.

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Rohan Campbell himself was as delighted by Ricky’s ugly finish as anybody else. In a current interview with ScreenRant, he received excited upon studying in regards to the set piece within the script: “I had no thought how they had been going to do it, and I simply needed to be sure that no bees had been going to get damage within the course of… it clearly seems wonderful within the film, and it’s most likely my favourite method I’ve ever died on digital camera. And I’ve died lots of other ways on digital camera. However this one is electrical.”

In a movie stuffed with delightfully over-the-top deaths, Ricky’s demise nonetheless stands fingers and shoulders above the remainder in how expertly it blends the laughs with the gore. Even when the remainder of The Monkey didn’t ship (which it does), we’d nonetheless say that the bees are cause alone to provide the film a watch, as they’ve set an impossibly excessive bar for different horror kills this 12 months to reside as much as. The Monkey is now enjoying in theaters.