The Monkey
Neon | Release Date: February 21, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
15
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyFeb 28, 2025
It’s a busy catalogue of gruesome absurdities that’s more consciously surrealist than the Final Destination series’s Mouse Trap-style executions, akin instead to the bizarro corpses crowding the afterlife’s waiting room in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), with a splash of Peter Jackson’s early, gore-splattered horror-comedies. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsFeb 24, 2025
The Monkey quite competently makes a monkey out of the human ego, though the comedy choreography is a few bananas short of a bunch. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 21, 2025
It’s still a serviceable film, and you’re in for a wild and weird ride. Even its message, while nihilistic, has merit. I only wish The Monkey had a more balanced story to counteract its weaker elements. Read full review
60
ABC NewsPeter TraversFeb 21, 2025
Theo James plays twin brothers on the run from a toy monkey with blood-splattering murder on its mind. Director Oz Perkins doesn’t disappoint with his ferociously funny take on Stephen King’s short story even if he never reaches the horror heights. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 13, 2025
For all its unpredictability and nerve, the film too often feels snarky rather than subversive. Read full review
60
EmpireJamie GrahamFeb 3, 2025
Don’t expect the true terror of Perkins’ Longlegs or King’s source story. Do expect plentiful gags to make you, well, gag. The best scenes here are a gory glory. Read full review
59
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzFeb 20, 2025
Perkins’s version of The Monkey is an annoying, snarky and slight endeavour that just about kills itself in its bid to satisfy all the many cinema-starved sickos out there. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckFeb 20, 2025
Not all of it works, but it’s never uninteresting or uncreative — especially when it comes to finding inventively horrible (or horribly inventive) ways for people to die. Read full review
50
SlashfilmJeremy MathaiFeb 6, 2025
The Monkey is a blood-soaked barrel of laughs and grisly kills that never finds an effective way to reconcile either of those. Read full review
40
iChristina NewlandFeb 28, 2025
The Monkey is surprisingly lacking in any good ideas. In fact, it’s the worst thing a horror film can be: boring. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Angelica Jade BastienFeb 24, 2025
The problem is that The Monkey has a hole at its center. It isn’t comedic enough to distract from the fact that the film traffics in rote archetypes, and it doesn’t quite pluck the heartstrings of its audience over the ragged inheritance from fathers to their sons either. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleFeb 21, 2025
Given its overabundance of empty shock humor, the movie seems afraid to be about much of anything except its toy monkey’s prankish body count. Read full review
40
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 20, 2025
It’s content to be just one long, sick joke without a punchline, designed to occasionally punctuate a stylishly nihilistic P.O.V. with a lot of OMG moments. You may love it or hate it. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 20, 2025
To everyone’s complaints that Longlegs’ plot turned daft, I can only shrug: it was easily assured enough to sustain a deadly undertow, while dancing about with a diabolical sense of mischief. I also point them to The Monkey as Exhibit A for what misfiring daftness looks like. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeFeb 19, 2025
The deaths here are neither funny nor scary or even gross enough to linger, we’re all rendered unshockable far too soon. Read full review
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