Not for the faint of heart, we'd say it is one of 2025's scariest yet funniest films.

The comedy horror thriller comes from a trilogy of horror masters. Not only is The Monkey based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King (IT, The Shining), it was also written and directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat's Daughter, Longlegs) and produced by James Wan (The Conjuring, Insidious).

The story follows twins, Bill and Hal (played as boys by Christian Convery and men by Theo James), who have been cursed by an innocuous-looking, killer wind-up drum-playing toy monkey since childhood.

Every time the toy monkey bangs its drums, someone around it dies in an extraordinarily outrageous manner.

After throwing the sinister object down a well as children, Bill and Hal go decades without death but are still traumatised by what happened to them and have grown estranged.

However, when the monkey returns and begins a new killing spree, it forces the brothers to team up and confront the cursed toy once again.

Upon release, The Monkey earned lots of comparisons to Final Destination, as both horrors are structured around a string of gruesome deaths that the viewer knows are going to happen.

That said, the audience never knows who is going to be killed or how or when, creating tension.

Indeed, anytime the titular toy is onscreen in The Monkey, there is a pit of dread in the viewer's stomach that it is going to start drumming and thus, cause a gory death.

It's also worth noting, however, that Perkins' movie is also surprisingly funny.

Not only are The Monkey's killings hilariously over-the-top, but the writer-director finds plenty of ghoulish humour around the awkwardness of death, as well as the cruel fact that it inevitably comes for us all.

Holding an impressive 77% score on Rotten Tomatoes, you can read a sample of some of the glowing reviews for the film below:

AV Club: "Part Gremlins and part Final Destination, it’s a vicious little horror-comedy whose punchline is that we’re all walking around with our heads in an invisible guillotine whose blade could fall at any moment."

Bloody Disgusting: "With brisk storytelling efficiency and a playful spirit, The Monkey delivers a Stephen King adaptation like no other. Perkins pushes back against logic in favour of entertaining midnight madness, and death has never been funnier or gorier."

Chicago Reader: "If you’re willing to dig past The Monkey’s blood and guts, you’ll find a thoughtful inquiry into the very different lives of people depending on their response and disposition toward the random, inordinate, and callous suffering around us."

Mark Kermode: "This is a riot of a film and I pretty much enjoyed every moment of it."

Observer: "At its best, The Monkey is an R-rated Looney Tunes-level extravaganza of death, and the movie points and laughs at the absurd, mind-bending ways in which the grim reaper comes for us all."

TheWrap: "A sick and twisted work of comic genius where the punchlines punch so hard you’ll explode."

How to watch The Monkey

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Also co-starring Tatiana Maslany and featuring several fun cameo performances, The Monkey is now streaming in Ireland and the UK on Prime Video.