The Monkey (2025)
Rated 15
Spoiler Free
That simian shitbag is on my shoulders, shagging any coherent thoughts I might have right out of my other ear with his hairy little monkey finger.
It’s been four months since I was willing and able to complete a Bedsit Cinema review. Even when I was a mental health inpatient I was able to write. Now, not so much. I’ve been banging the Bedsit Cinema drum for years non stop and it has bugged me no end that I’ve not been able to produce anything I’ve been proud/lazy enough to share.
I’ve had ideas, of course. Non stop ideas pouring out of my brain and half finished into Google Docs. My Google Docs folder looks like Gepetto’s floor when he discarded all the proto-Pinocchios whose nose didn’t get erections; half finished disappointments. Here’s the thing, anyone can have a good idea, but ideas aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. If we all could achieve anything we dreamed without any effort or talent we'd all be influencers or YouTube fighters or Andrew Tate or whatever it is kids aspire to these days.
When I started Bedsit Cinema it was a whim which then became something that mentally kept me going when I was in a bad way and lived in a bedsit, a prison cell where I couldn't wash my clothes and literally had holes in my shoes. Marvellous Marvin Hagler probably sums this up best: “it’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5am when you’ve been sleeping in silk sheets.” In the bedsit I was on the road at 5am was to top up the electricity so I could see and heat things, I am now, comparatively if not literally, in silk sheets.
So maybe it’s not that I’m off, perhaps writer’s block is just a mental adjustment. I’d claim it’s about finding something interesting to say but you’ve just read several paragraphs of my drivel and I haven’t spoken about the film yet. Begrudgingly, The Monkey!
Creepy monkey model haunts a family and the sons are forced to return to their hometown and people die yadayadayada. It really is as boring as that and loses further points for not being able to add any tension into its kills, kills which trust me are the only reason to watch The Monkey. Sure there’s gore, but as much as I like the money shot, the build up is as important. The Monkey has simianarities to the Final Destination films but none of the craft of that admittedly limited formula.
I hoped for more from Longlegs director Osgood Perkins. Longlegs suffered towards the end but had admirable style. The Monkey never offers anything remotely special, just silly, slack slapstick with claret. It got the writing monkey off my back, but don’t waste your time. 5/10
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