‘The Monkey’ Trailer Promises Fresh Horror From ‘Longlegs’ Director Osgood Perkins

The new thriller, based on the short story from Stephen King, stars Theo James and Elijah Wood

Neon

“The Monkey” is coming for you.

The new horror movie, written and directed by Osgood Perkins, produced by James Wan and based on the short story by Stephen King, arrives in theaters on Feb. 21, 2025. And a brand-new trailer teases a gory, horrifying tale of a toy monkey gone psycho. Watch it below.

“The Monkey” follows twin brothers Hal and Bill (both played by Theo James), who discover a wind-up toy monkey in the attic, which sets off a series of shocking deaths. While they go their separate ways, the curse of the monkey follows them both, leading them to reconcile and attempt to thwart the monkey once and for all.

Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Colin O’Brien, Christian Convery, Rohan Campbell and Sarah Levy co-star.

When TheWrap spoke to Perkins around the release of “Longlegs,” which wound up being a sleeper smash that would amass more than $100 million at the box office, the filmmaker seemed delighted at how far apart the two projects were.

“The best news about it is that [‘The Monkey’] could not be more different than the ‘Longlegs’ movie,” Perkins said. The project was something that was brought to him, rather than one that he developed himself. “It was clear to me that it was more ‘Creepshow.’ And it’s a comedy about death. It’s a comedy about the fact that we all die. I wanted to make a movie about the fact that everybody dies. It’s not the fucking monkey that makes people die. Everybody dies and that’s life. And so to make a delirious throwback comedy that feels like ‘Gremlins’ or ‘American Werewolf in London felt’ felt like a better medium than doing something serious.”

The original short story was first published in Gallery magazine in 1980 and collected in “Skeleton Crew” in 1985. “The Monkey” hits theaters on Feb. 21, 2025.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.