It’s hard to get horror comedy right. There have only ever been a handful of horror comedies that I have seen in my life that I have actually enjoyed. The Monkey falls squarely in the category of a failed attempt at this subgenre.
I actually thought the movie started off good and had some promise. The first part of the movie was a long flashback of these twins who find this toy monkey that their father once had. When the monkey is wound up and starts banging its drum, a horrible death follows. That isn’t the problem with the movie. I thought there were some funny moments early that got a chuckle out of me.
The movie falls apart in the second half where they go to present time. The first problem with the movies is that the characterization is really weak. There are no likeable characters that you would want to root for. The second is that the plot is completely illogical. It makes no sense that the one brother would so desperately want to kill the other brother that he would use the monkey to do it, since the monkey doesn’t work that way. You can’t target someone’s death with it. If he really wanted his brother dead, there would be easier ways to do it. The movie just wallowed in its own stupidity and goes down as yet another terrible adaptation of a Stephen King story.
