Alright, let’s be real. 2025 was a massive year for Stephen King fans with the release of hits like The Long Walk. But while the brutal, soul-crushing, dystopian themes have most fans rightfully losing their minds, there’s another King adaptation that hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. That film is The Monkey — and no, it’s not just another spooky doll movie. This film is a glorious, blood-splattered fever dream that’s part nightmare, part laugh-riot, and it’s one of the most unfiltered fun times fans will have with horror all year.
Think of it this way: 2025 served us a full-course King’s meal. If The Long Walk is the delicious but serious main course that left audiences staring at the wall, rethinking their entire existence, then The Monkey was the lighthearted appetizer that whetted the appetite for that main dish. On the surface, it doesn’t try to compete on scale or solemnity; it simply, yet fully, embraces its own brand of chaos and shows viewers a very different side of King’s vivid imagination.
‘The Monkey’ Is the Overlooked Stephen King Adaptation of 2025
With The Long Walk being the more hyped King adaptation of 2025, a ton of people slept on The Monkey when it first dropped. Which is a shame, because the film quietly racked up over $68 million at the global box office on a relatively limited budget of $10-11 million. Although it’s important to say that the movie’s financial success barely came as a surprise, given that horror maestro Osgood Perkins directed it.
The Monkey was released in 2025 and is based on King’s extremely creepy 1980 short story of the same name. The premise of the film is classic King: two brothers, Hal and Bill — both played by a fantastically frazzled Theo James — dig up their dad’s old cymbal-clapping toy monkey from childhood. Needless to say, big mistake — huge. They quickly learn it’s cursed: every time someone winds it up, a person dies in a wildly inventive and usually gruesome way. Amidst all this chaos, the cast is stacked with familiar faces viewers will be thrilled to see… before the monkey possibly offs them. Tatiana Maslany, Adam Scott, Christian Convery, and a perfectly cast Elijah Wood all pop in, making the ride even more unpredictable.
The movie sits pretty in the high 70s on Rotten Tomatoes, with plenty of reviews praising its “gleeful gore” and the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Despite the critical praise, fan reaction has been mixed — which is hardly surprising. One fan quipped that the monkey character was “…scarier than Annabelle on a sugar rush.” Meanwhile, another said they went in expecting a Conjuring clone and got something closer to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II on crack. But even the deeply skeptical critics agree that The Monkey moves fast, delivers the gore, and commits to its weirdness.
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Why ‘The Monkey’ Hits Different from ‘The Long Walk’
Both these 2025 King flicks couldn’t be more different from each other if they tried. On the one hand, The Long Walk — adapted from King’s Richard Bachman novel of the same name — presents a bleak dystopian marathon about fifty boys forced to walk until only one survives. Miss a step, slow down too much, and you’re executed on the spot. The tone is suffocatingly grim. Every scene builds dread, from the first pacing test to the slow collapse of friendships among walkers. Simply put, it’s a mix of horror and an endurance test for both the characters and the audience. Conversely, The Monkey simply dives headfirst into a pool of “weird.” The horror here is not restricted; it’s absurd and filled with what can only be described as random acts of violence. One minute, characters are hashing out deep family trauma, the next, someone’s taken out by a freak accident involving a common household appliance. Perkins is basically daring audiences not to scream and laugh at the same time.
Beyond their tone, they’re stylistically worlds apart. Where The Long Walk uses long, agonizing silences and a grim color palette to convey the weight of every step, The Monkey is all quick cuts, garish colors, and practical effects that feel like a tribute to the gonzo horror of the ‘80s. It’s got all the family drama heart of King’s best work, but it filters that heart through the lens of early Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi works. For fans, that difference matters. People who walked into The Long Walk wanted heavy, existential horror — and got it. Those who checked out The Monkey may have expected another haunted-doll knockoff, but instead found a mix of family trauma, cursed nostalgia, and cartoon-like grotesque deaths. The attic scenes between Hal and Bill, where childhood memories collide with adult grief, actually ground the madness in something surprisingly emotional.
So, if you’ve already trudged through the slow-burn nature of The Long Walk, check out the weirder, bloodier, and honestly more fun pacing of The Monkey on Hulu.
