Tag: The Monkey

[EXPRESSO] Keeper (2025) | ♬ Go to the woods and see ♬

After Longlegs and The Monkey, Oz Perkins is back with a new horror film (releasing just 2 days ago here), Keeper, but i’ve never heard much… well, anything about it, ill or good, but it might be me accidentally missing coverage, wouldn’t be the first time.

So i went in blind… and i kinda get why this didn’t generate much buzz, maybe, but first the plot.

A couple spends their anniversary weekend in a secluded cabin in the woods, and once there strange things start happening, revealing the house’s dark secrets..

I don’t think Keeper is a bad film, at all, but i’m willing to call it Oz Perkins first “trip up”, it is disappointing, because even if the final twist pays off, makes the build up worth it for an interesting turn… it doesn’t change that it has to do so with a character explaining the lore to us, instead of you known, just showing us, since it’s a movie and all of that, plus it it intriguing but nothing special enough to balance out and gliss over the fact the build up (and the premise in itself) seems to be made irritating and generic on purpose with how the cliches are placed.

Yes, obviously to play with audiences’ expectations (and with the horror archetype of the “cabin in the woods”), and it does work, but the story could have been more cohesive, or have people invested more by the narrative itself instead of the deliberate bold faced deception that also saps any mystery the story could have had when the loredump drops, to say nothing of how some subplots are simply kinda forgotten by the end.

It’s still far from unwatchable, mind you, thanks in no small part to Maslany’s great performance as Liz, but it’s also disappointing.

[EXPRESSO] The Monkey (2025) | FAQING MONKY

After bringing about a Manson-esque supernatural horror with Longlegs, Oz Perkins is back with an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story The Monkey, about – indeed – a cursed mechanical wind-up toy monkey (no cimbals, but a good ol’ drum & stick set) that is able kill off people via convenient incidents, found by a couple of brothers as it belonged to their father, who ran off home years ago. They find out there’s something about the monkey toy and the deaths that seem to happened with eerie timing, so they decide to hide it away.

25 years later, mysterious deaths start happening again in the brother’s hometown of Casco, Maine (ah yes, the inland, Jessica Fletcher-free part of it), forcing the two siblings, whom has grown strangers to each other, to settle that dark secret from their past….

And boy is this one a good time, as it goes for a deliberately over the top comedy horror tone, which works splendidly with the very blasè existentialist dark humour, and doesn’t waste time trying to make more complex or apply “logic” to a concept that defies it, because the idea of a djinn/genie that can basically dish out death without having to twist around the words of the people making the wishes doesn’t make sense either.

The toy monkey won’t care what you think (or want) either way.

The characters and exchanges are delightfully over the top in some way or another (while reserving some time for more serious, emotional moments), as are the many gory deaths, as gruesome as they are funny, with people exploding into pieces, torn apart by lawnmowers, being brutally impaled via a series of absurd little accidents, the effects are great too, and it doesn’t overstays its welcome by padding itself out.

Quite fun, recommended.