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Review – The Monkey (2025)

The Monkey makes an array of promises. It vows to shock at the audacity of its plot, urges a repulsive affective response at some of the more gnarly moments, and most importantly, it demands that every viewer is grinning from ear to ear at the bombastic ludicrousness of it all. Conceived originally as a short story from horror darling Stephen King was ‘The Monkey’ (1980), which followed a man and his lifelong plague of terror caused by a toy monkey that would cause utter destruction. It is a somber tale of trauma and generational guilt all bundled up with a string of dread and doom. Indeed, in its contemporary adaptation, such commentary is explored, however, the new wildly ambitious feature is far from a melancholic woe. 

Originally, the rights for King’s story was owned by Frank Darabont, legendary director of ‘ The Shawshank Redemption‘ (1994) and ‘The Walking Dead’ (2010-11), only for his plans to vanquish after prioritising other projects. After sitting on the shelf, James Wan, under the banner ‘Atomic Monster’, acquired the rights, with filmmaker Osgood ‘Oz’ Perkins brought on to write and direct. Originally, producers aimed to imitate that same foreboding aura that King’s penned short conjured, yet, Perkins insisted that the sporadic nature of the narrative’s various plays of death spoke to the utter disregard that death has. The subject can of course be mysterious, chilling and scary, just as Perkin’s previous feature ‘Longlegs’ (2024) demonstrates, but more than that, it can be entirely random, unbiased and determined by a string of unfortunate coincidences.

You see, Perkins faced his own tragedy at the hands of his parents’ deaths. The 18 year old Oz was just on the cusp of adulthood when his father, Anthony Hopkins (aka Psycho’s [1960] Norman Bates), died in 1992 of AIDS-related pneumonia. A few years later, his mother, actress and model Berry Berenson, was a passenger on Flight 11 when it crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. This fate is gut-wrenchingly terrifying to face, with the thought of loved ones departing in the most painful of ways becoming a whole-heartedly catastrophic event to even imagine, and yet Perkins has managed to channel this hurt into his work. He interprets these awful events into something that is horrific in itself, creating a vision, an exhibition and a vessel to explore and therefore externalise the internal. Such analogy has not been pulled out of thin air, as Perkins himself has incorporated this anguish into the promotional material of The Monkey

“Death does not care about your feelings” is essentially the core value that The Monkey pertains, in fact, an actual advertisement for the film included a poster quoting “The hard truth is that everybody dies, and that’s fucked up. But at least now you can enjoy death with your friends and loved ones”. 

With this notion of the brutal, yet somehow cathartic and dare it be said peaceful analogy of death and its lingering shadow, grief, The Monkey aims to portray its philosophy in the most daring of ways. Forgive the second quoting, but as Perkins states, the film shows a series of “decapitations, eviscerations, electrocutions, impalements, disembowelments, infestations, immolations, conflagrations, exsanguination and a defenestration”. As one can imagine, the copious acts of violences on display are so rambunctious and vivacious that it genuinely makes the grim-reaper sequences of deaths in the Final Destination franchise seem like child’s play as we witness one unfortunate circumstance after another throughout this berserk and entertaining film. 

Whilst it is clear that full throttle, pedal to the metal frenziedness was the goal, The Monkey manages to pace itself nicely, and rather steadily, taking its time to unravel the madness, additionally enveloping a decent backstory into the meat of the film. With this also comes an ensemble of superb performances from a truly stellar list of actors including, Tatiana Maslany, Colin O’Brien, Rogan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott, Elijah Woods and last but not least Christian Convery and Theo James, who both put their acting talents to the test, genuinely bringing their A-game at every step.

Whilst it is sure to force a good handful of viewers to raise their brow at some of the more gratuitously gory, almost ‘pulled out of the hat’ kind of scenes, The Monkey equally has the gall to enforce a good chuckle and giggle at the mere fun of it all.

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Review – Longlegs (2024) Spolier Free

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins is Longlegs, the new horror film on the lips of seemingly everyone, following an FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), who has been tasked with solving the mystery behind the ‘Longlegs’ killer before they strike again. 

Perkins understands dread, fear, panic, terror, and alarm, to name a few of the most horrid of feelings that plague the pits of mankind. It feels as if Perkins made a horror film for horror fans – not necessarily to please the masses and tick off a list of jumpscares and monotonous kills but for those desperate to witness a film that really gets under the skin and creates a lasting impression. In a sense, Longlegs does not simply poke the bear and illicit a frightful moment that ends the minute after leaving the theatre; instead, Longlegs’ ability to really rattle the psyche enforces a lingering stain upon the immersed viewer. 

There are varying ways in which Longlegs grafts for this commendation, which is quite the case considering the stellar box office stats and apparent praise beaming from left, right and centre. One of the significant calls to success are the performances from the likes of Blair Underwood, the hardened Agent Carter, Alicia Witt, Christian devotee and mother to Lee, and of course, last but not least, Nic Cage, who provides quite possibly one of the best performance of his career. Immediate applause was granted for Underwood and Witt, yet where the diamond sparkles brightest is from the seriously incredible work from Monroe and Cage, whose portrayals of varying unique souls are sure to be notorious in future horror history lessons. Their joint natural talents and experience handling previous horror films cultivate an electrifyingly intense experience to watch unfold on screen. 

Yet, whilst it is duty bound to owe applaud to the assets that are Monroe and Cage, what catalyses the strong characters is the powerful script from Perkins, who knows precisely how to pluck at the nerve and form an unreal story that is as enigmatic, perplexing and intriguing as it is utterly shocking and to put it mildly downright nightmarish. As with many meritorious feats, Longlegs shines in its spirited visuals, which feature a handful of ugly, shocking images, which many Longleg’s viewers will vouch for as being quite invasive and hard to watch. 

The moody and dread-filled atmosphere speaks to the film’s overt stylisation and thematics towards the Satanic Panic era, detailing an almost infectious-like moral panic that spread like wildfire, particularly throughout the U.S. circa the 1980s – 1990s. Longlegs tackles the layered fears that manifested from the ‘panic’, such as horror within the home, evil infecting the innocent and the inescapable weaving of darkness that has the ability to seep into even the most inconspicuous of circumstances. 

A lot can be said about Longleg’s lengthy, effective and notably successful marketing campaign, which saw an array of strange social media posts infect the screens of every digital platform with an air of unexplained mystery. The team behind Longlegs’ marketing, Neon, used guerrilla techniques, which included randomised advertisements of phone numbers and Zodiac-Killer-like codes with seemingly no outward connection to an upcoming film. Joining this was a series of disturbing clips featured online, which showed the likes of a family picture with strange audio over the top, followed by other images of a lifeless body on a floor covered by sheets.

As evidenced in the marketing, let alone the entire film itself, Longlegs has an eerie, omnipresent aura of genuine creepiness that feels as if the horror has the ability to surpass the screen. This, combined with the moody, dismal, dark layout and beyond-creative character development, make Longlegs a strong, dare it to be said, unbeatable component for the year’s best horror film.

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