This is going to be a massive year for new Stephen King adaptations. We don’t yet know if The Long Walk is getting a theatrical release in 2025, but The Life Of Chuck is coming in May, The Running Man is hitting the big screen in November, and both HBO’s IT: Welcome To Derry and MGM+’s The Institute will debut in the fall. Arriving before any of them, however, is Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey – and King himself is promoting it as “batshit insane.”
Social media reactions to early screenings of the bombastic new horror comedy arrived earlier this month, but Stephen King has now added his voice to the chorus of praise. The author has seen the movie, and in posting his critique to Threads, he has revealed that he is enamored with how off-the-walls it is. King wrote,
You’ve never seen anything like THE MONKEY. It’s batshit insane. As someone who has indulged in batshittery from time to time, I say that with admiration.
As a dedicated fan of Stephen King’s work, I can certainly attest that the guy has a taste for “batshittery,” to use his wonderful new word. To cite an example, his short story “The Cat From Hell” (included in the collection Just After Sunset) concludes with the titular animal killing a professional hitman by crawling into his mouth and nesting in his chest cavity.
That being said, Osgood Perkins’ new adaptation of Stephen King’s short story differs wildly from the source material, as all of its craziest material is wholly original (which actually makes the author’s praise that much more notable). The Monkey centers on a pair of identical twin brothers – played as teens by Christian Convery and as adults by Theo James – who find their lives plagued by a cursed toy: a wind-up monkey that randomly kills people whenever it is activated. More that just having people keel over, however, the evil creation gets quite clever with its murder methods, frequently crafting Rube Goldbergian machinations of death.
To put it in the context of movies to watch to get you ready for The Monkey, it’s like the cleverness of Final Destination being combined with the blunt sensibilities of The Addams Family, and the action is slathered in gallons and gallons of fake blood.
Featuring a terrific supporting cast that includes Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, The Monkey arrives in theaters in just a few weeks – specifically on February 21. It’s one of our most anticipated titles on the 2025 Movie Release Calendar, so be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend in the month ahead, as we will have plenty of fun coverage coming for you.