Ben O’Shea Reviews: ‘The Monkey’.

Our resident film reviewer Ben O’Shea swings by to tell us all about a new horror/ comedy film called ‘The Monkey’, in cinemas now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great per flick with benow Well, at the risk of
sounding terribly shallow, he had THEO Jans because he's a
very adsome man. But I know nothing about this movie
you're reviewing, Ben.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
The Monkey World. You'll be happy to know that you
don't just get one THEO James in this movie. He's
playing twins, so you get two of them. You get two.
So what's your favorite THEO James? He was in White
Load a Gentleman. The Gentleman. Yeah, the guy Richard maybe
spin off series. He's great, So I like him having

(00:38):
his own accent. Ye, he's a yank, you know what
I mean. So The Monkey is a horror movie. It's
an adaptation of a Stephen King short story from nineteen eighteen.
And now the long checkered history of Stephen King adaptations
has produced some amazing films that it is, like The
Shining Misery, and some that weren't horror because he does

(01:02):
other things as well, Shawshank, Redemption Stand behind Me. But
it was also produced many many duds, like quite quite
recently The Dark Tower. I still don't even know what
that movie was about. It was just so terrible. It
was supposed to be this whole franchise, but that just
died in the water when it was just a complete flop.

(01:24):
Children of the Corn back in the day, Children of
the Corn too. There's a lot of really bad movies.
Maybe that maybe the original it was good with Tim
Curry asias. Yeah, so there are some good ones. There
are some bad ones. But in the end I would
say The Monkey probably is one of the best of
the last few years.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's inspired by the old monkey Paw curse, you know,
like where you get the old story from from way
back in the day, probably eighteenth century, something like that,
like a mummified monkey paw. You get three wishes and
then but each wish comes with some sort of calamity
and you can't the messages. The messages, you know, you
better be careful what you wish forking right, And so

(02:05):
in this case those a monkey Paul. You've got a
toy monkey, one of those ones like the Juris Cell bunny.
Wind it up, bangs on the drum, and every time
you do that, it has supernatural powers that aren't really
explained that someone in the near vicinity, some random person
will be struck down. The gruesome the gruesome accident but

(02:29):
there's no predicting it, and so people you know, might
wind up the monkey and go, you know, kill me
arch enemy. No, you might lose your best mate or
something like that. This is no rhyme or reasonable, And
so the film opens with severances Adam Scott, who is
so fantastic. This cameo at the start is worth the
price of the mission alone. He comes in sort of
covered in blood, holding his toy monkey into a second

(02:51):
hand store, going, you've got to take this thing. And
then we get a little bit of a taste of
what the monkey does, and then we sort of fast
for a couple of years, and these twin boys who
were left fatherless after Adam Scott kind of disappears out
of the picture, they find this toy monkey in the
closet of their house. They start mucking around with it.

(03:13):
Then you start to really realize. They start to realize, ye, yes,
there's lots of we're not gonna win. I'm working around
here and so anyway, and then we start to realize
what is actually going on here. They go, oh, okay,
this is not good. There's some people dying in really
horrible ways. We don't want to go to any more. Funerals.

(03:34):
Let's throw this monkey down the well and that's the
end of it. Twenty five years later, these twin boys
have grown up to be to THEO James's and there's
a new kind of spait of mysterious accidents that start
to happen, and they go, hang in a minute, I
think someone's found this monkey. We need to find a
way to beat the monkey. And he did say Spain,

(03:57):
it's okay, yep so, and so that it unfolds from there,
and one of the THEO James's has his own son
by this point and an estranged relationship, and so he's
juggling that situation as well as trying to figure out
what's going on. You get a little a larger wood
cameo in here, as well as a stepdad who's a
fathering expert. Is just the biggest kind of pain in

(04:19):
the fact you can ever imagine. But the great thing
about this film it's directed by Osgode Perkins, who gave
us Long Legs last year. That really love that scary movie.
It was unsettling, haunt your dreams kind of material. In
this case, he's not. It's kind of a silly plot,
right like as a toy monkey that kills people for
reasons that you're you're not ever sure or why, and
so instead of taking it seriously, he plays it all

(04:41):
for jokes and that actually is quite effective. Like it's
kind of like Nightmare on Elm Street with Freddie. It's
kind of funny most of the time. You don't take
it seriously that the horror stuff, the gory stuff is
so over the top that you sort of find yourself
are covering your eyes and going oh no, but you
don't really ever take it that seriously, and so it's
a bit of fun from that perspective. And some of

(05:02):
the ways these poor people get knocked off by the monkey,
it's just like it's just it's it's just yeah, just
like each one just keeps escalating. So yeah, it's a
bit of fun, but it's it's you know, look, it's
not it's not high browse cinema. Take it too seriously.
Don't take it serious monkey business.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
So how many not monkey man's are you giving it?

Speaker 2 (05:22):
I'm going to give it three solid if you like this,
we're seeing a lot with Robbie Williams and exactly the monkey. Yeah,
lots of monkeys around. Ben o'she