THE MONKEY

Name: THE MONKEY
Item: THE MONKEY
Author: Review

"Dark Apocalyptic Spirit"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

THE MONKEY is a bloody horror movie about a wind-up toy monkey with demonic supernatural powers, which haunts the lives of twin brothers. When their father disappears, Hall and Bill find a wind-up toy monkey that plays drums hidden away in his possessions. Winding up the toy causes the gruesome deaths of their babysitter, their mother and their aunt’s husband. So, they pack it up and throw it down a well. Twenty-five years later, the toy mysteriously reappears, and people gruesomely start dying again, until it looks like the Apocalypse has begun.

Based on a Stephen King story, THE MONKEY tells a depressing, ultraviolent story of death and revenge, with lots of strong foul language and gruesome violence. This eventually leads to apocalyptic destruction, including an ironic but not hateful reference to the Pale Horseman from the Book of Revelation. However, one of the twin brothers in THE MONKEY has a teenage son he loves and wants to protect his son from the evil toy. So, the movie’s ending is slightly positive, though the filmmakers and distributor leave room for a possible sequel.

Content:

(B, C, OO, LLL, VVV, S, A, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light moral worldview, with two light references to the Book of Revelation (to the Apocalypse and to the Pale Horseman), about a toy monkey with vague demonic supernatural powers (movie never reveals specific details as to how the toy gained those powers, but the toy is compared to the Devil at one point), which haunts the lives of twin brothers, but one of the brothers tries to protect his teenage son from the toy’s evil powers and seems to succeed at the end, though there’s room for a sequel, plus there are some images of crucifixes and one funeral scene with a priest;

Foul Language:

At least 62 obscenities (including 46 “f” words), six strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus Christ and four GD profanities;

Violence:

Lots of extreme and strong gruesome violence includes man is disemboweled by a harpoon, young woman decapitated at Japanese restaurant, man is trampled by horses, woman is accidentally killed by a falling shotgun, a person is bitten by a cobra snake, decapitation by a bowling ball, woman’s head catches fire, and she runs out of her house only to be impaled by a For Sale sign, etc.;

Sex:

No implied or depicted sex scenes but there are a few crude references to sex and sexual immorality (an aunt and her husband are “swingers”);

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

Brief beer drinking;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

A character vapes, and there’s a question about being high on drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Revenge tragically backfires, twin maliciously bullies his slightly younger brother, some lying.

More Detail:

THE MONKEY is a bloody horror movie about a wind-up toy monkey with supernatural powers that haunts the lives of twin brothers as children and, later, as adults. Based on a Stephen King story, THE MONKEY tells a depressing, ultraviolent story of death and revenge, with lots of strong foul language, which leads to apocalyptic destruction, but one of the brothers has a teenage son he wants to protect from the evil toy, so the ending is slightly positive, with an ironic reference to the Pale Horseman from the Book of Revelation.

The movie opens in 1999 when a man visits an antique shop to return the toy monkey. However, before he can do that, the monkey plays its little drum, and a chain reaction results in the shopowner being disemboweled by a harpoon. The man disappears, leaving his wife, Lois, alone to raise their twin sons, Hal and Bill.

The boys discover the toy monkey in their father’s belongings. They wind the key, then their babysitter is accidentally decapitated at a Japanese restaurant. One day, Hal gets tired of Bill always bullying him. So, Hal winds the monkey’s key, but their mother dies instead.

Hal throws the monkey away before he and Bill go to Maine to live with their Aunt Id and her husband Chip. However, the monkey mysteriously reappears, and Bill winds the key whereupon Chip dies in a horse stampede.

The twins decide to drip the money down a well.

Twenty-five years later, Hal is still traumatized by these events. He’s become estranged from everyone, including his teenage son, Petey, who lives with Hal’s ex-wife. Even worse, her new husband plans to adopt Petey, cutting off Hal totally from Petey.

When their Aunt Ida mysteriously dies, Bill contacts Hal. Bill thinks the monkey must have reappeared again. So, he asks Hal to go to Ida’s house and retrieve it. While there, the real estate agent tells Hal that the town has experienced a series of freak accidents. Then, when they start looking through the house, a shotgun accidentally falls from a closet and kills the real estate agent.

Hal discovers that Bill lied and has been turning the money’s key in retaliation against Hal trying to kill him years ago. Hal is worried that Bill’s actions will kill his son one day because the person who winds the key is never the one to die. Bill offers a bizarre solution to protect Hal’s son. More twists follow.

THE MONKEY tells a depressing, ultraviolent story of death and revenge, with lots of strong foul language and gruesome violence. This eventually leads to apocalyptic destruction, including an ironic but not hateful reference to the Pale Horseman from the Book of Revelation. However, one of the twin brothers in THE MONKEY has a teenage son he loves and wants to protect his son from the evil toy. So, the movie’s worldview and ending are slightly positive, though the filmmakers and distributor seem to have left room for a possible sequel.

THE MONKEY is written and directed by Osgood Perkins, the son of the troubled actor Tony Perkins. He says he drew from personal experiences about his father, who died when Osgood was young. This is perhaps what gives THE MONEKY its dark atmosphere.