I like my horror with a bit of humor mixed in. In fact, the more seriously-disturbing people say a horror movie is, the less inclined I am to see it. I’m not averse to gore, to be clear. If I were, there’s no way I could be a fan of the Final Destination movies, after all. If you’re familiar with the films, you know that finding creative and brutally disgusting ways for someone to die is kind of that franchise’s bread and butter. So when I saw promotions for The Monkey, one of the new horror movies on the 2025 movie release schedule, I had a feeling it’d be my cup of tea.
And yet, I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it until recently. I knew there would be humor in the Stephen King adaptation, but I had no idea just how darkly similar it is to the Final Destination films. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have waited so long to watch it. I’m going to be light on actual character/plot spoilers in this article, but I’ll be describing some of the death sequences in The Monkey. So if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s available streaming with a Hulu subscription.
In case you haven’t actually watched The Monkey yet, Osgood Perkins’ movie is based on a Stephen King short story and follows twin brothers who inherit a wind-up monkey that plays a little drum. As they learn fairly quickly in their childhood years, if the monkey plays its drums, someone will die. The cause of death is usually some kind of freak accident.
If you’re familiar with the Final Destination movies, then the mention of “freak accident” might conjure any number of flashbacks from the horror films. Except the accidents in the Final Destination movies are the result of an unseen “Death” attempting to reclaim the lives it feels its owed. In the case of this toy monkey, its target is merely someone in its general vicinity, but the cause of death could be anything. That’s where the Final Destination connection came in for me.
While I might have first thought about the FD movies during the opening scene, when Adam Scott’s character is trying to offload the cursed monkey at an antique shop, I don’t think the thought fully formed until a little bit later. It was when the kids are at the hibachi restaurant with their babysitter, and it became clear that something absolutely horrible was about to happen in this setting full of scorching-hot table-tops, open flames and flashy knife tricks.
All I could think was, “Wow, how have the Final Destination movies not used a hibachi table in one of their scenarios?” I guess The Monkey got there first. After that, I saw the twisted connection between seemingly random mishaps resulting in horrific blood-spattering deaths.
I’m an anxious person by nature, so I have no trouble conjuring up any number of worst-case-scenario outcomes for a given occasion. That may be one of the reasons I appreciate the dark humor of the Final Destination movies, as the myriad of gory deaths are absolutely over the top, but at the same time, my imaginative mind can accept them as nightmare-case-scenario just enough to suspend my disbelief. I think The Monkey pulled that off just as well, albeit with a toy monkey playing the role of Death this time around.
Though I enjoyed the movie, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that The Monkey is just like the Final Destination movies. Beyond the plot, the tone and pacing also felt different. Osgood Perkins certainly has his own style, which I appreciated, but the suspense that built up each time the monkey started playing its drums really worked, and the payoff of something beyond horrific happening as a result definitely reminded me of one of the things I like about the Final Destination movies.
So if you’re fan of the franchise, you may want to give The Monkey a shot. As I said, the movie is streaming on Hulu. Also, if you’re looking to revisit the Final Destination movies, they’re streaming with an HBO Max subscription.