Movie Reviews

The Monkey Has Good Kills, But No Soul

Published

1 year ago

February 22, 2025

In adapting a Stephen King short story, director-writer Osgood Perkins clearly delights in crafting explosive, gory kills meant to spark a laugh more than terrify. Over the course of the film’s hour and 38 minutes, Perkins’s thinly drawn characters are set aflame, their heads are turned to vague viscera by bowling balls or made jelly by wild trampling horses, there is splatter from unforeseen shotgun wounds and unspooled intestines pulled taught by surprise harpoons to the gut. Each event is a freak accident that harkens to Final Destination-level hijinks but aims for more black comedy. It’s the kind of movie primed for midnight screenings. It is less intrigued with the moral portent of its characters’ dilemmas than it is interested in snickering at their fate, giving the film a vaguely nihilistic air. Of course, all machinations are born of a cursed monkey toy that proves impossible to get rid of, whether hacked to pieces or thrown down a well. The harsh, circus twang of the music that plays as it bangs gravely on a drum, teeth bared in a grimace below its depthless eyes, rattles more in the way of annoyance than fear.

Even with its inventive kills and tight runtime, I found myself jotting down notes to myself as I watched: Can this movie end? I just don’t care. The problem is that The Monkey has a hole at its center. It isn’t comedic enough to distract from the fact that the film traffics in rote archetypes, and it doesn’t quite pluck the heartstrings of its audience over the ragged inheritance from fathers to their sons either. The Monkey begins its jaundiced tale on the adolescence of twin brothers, Hal and Bill (Christian Convery), who are a study in contrasts. Hal, the true protagonist, is a wilting flower — easily bruised and endlessly bullied, especially by Bill. Bill mistakes smarm for charm, curses wildly, and treats Hal like a punching bag, seemingly convinced the difference in their birth order is marked by years not minutes. Their mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), does her best taking care of them, even as she reels from the unexplained disappearance of her pilot husband Petey (played by Adam Scott, who appears once in the memorable opening scene). Their father couldn’t get rid of the monkey, and so too are the sons beleaguered by it when they find it in a prim, robin’s egg blue hatbox in his room. Life quickly unravels from there as strange deaths in their small town pile up. The boys eventually pack up, move to Maine with their Aunt Ida (Sara Levy) and Uncle Chip (Perkins in dirtbag uncle mode and having fun with it), and throw the monkey down the aforementioned well.

Twenty-five years and a few more deaths later, the monkey seems dormant. Bill and Hal have become men, but haven’t quite grown up. They’re now played by Theo James, whose good looks could make-up for both twins’ deficient personalities. Bill’s smarm has calcified into a kind of mad obsession; Hal is a starkly lonely and cowardly man. Carrying along the thread of inheritance, Hal is a father to teenager Petey (Colin O’Brien), whom he contacts only once a year for fear that associating with him places a target on anyone’s back — the monkey pointing dead center. Hal’s lack of involvement has inspired his ex-wife’s new partner, played by a preening Elijah Wood in the film’s most successful comedic scene, to outright adopt Petey, potentially severing Hal’s pretense of care if it goes through. Familial strife is the film’s backbone, but what a poor and broken backbone it is.

Horror films primed on increasingly gory demises have always trafficked in archetypes. The dumb blonde. The head cheerleader. The gruff jock. These can operate as a crucial shorthand within the world of the film, but for the deaths to really hit with a gut-punch force, you have to feel something for the people — whether it’s hope that a beloved character survives or eagerness to witness a grating character perish. The Monkey has none of that pull. These aren’t characters or even archetypes but the bare sketches of human beings. No one in the film even seems that ruffled from the losses they endure, save perhaps for the brothers. But their storyline mostly brings to mind the fact that Maslany is too good an actor to be playing roles like this.

The Monkey continues Perkins’ brand of glossy, inert horror with the kind of cinematography and blocking that calls the wrong kind of attention to itself. Longlegs is more offensive in that regard because it took itself so damn seriously despite exploring nothing of merit with any panache. It was a stellar marketing campaign in search of a better film. But with this movie, Perkins tries to infuse a comedic edge to his work that indeed offers some manner of levity — whether it’s an inexperienced priest bumbling through a somber sermon or the grim breakdown of a realtor fluttering through a description of all the recent death in town. If anything, I wanted that humor to be punchier, more brutal. Instead, there are just more gruesome deaths, growing exceedingly ridiculous as the story continues. But a horror film can’t survive on kills alone, and the narrative of The Monkey — for all the movie’s craft and pedigree — is the worst thing a horror saga can be: boring.

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Movie Reviews

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

Published

4 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it. The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

Movie Reviews

‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

Published

16 hours ago

February 28, 2026

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.”

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic.

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

Movie Reviews

Movie review: Ballet-themed erotic drama ‘Dreams’ dissipates in finale

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Press Room

Movie review: Ballet-themed erotic drama ‘Dreams’ dissipates in finale

Mexican writer/director Michel Franco explores the dynamics of money, class and the border through the spiky, unsettling erotic drama “Dreams,” starring Jessica Chastain and Isaac Hernández, a Mexican ballet dancer and actor.

In the languidly paced “Dreams,” Franco presents two individuals in love (or lust?) who experiment with wielding the power at their fingertips against their lover, the violence either state or sexual in nature. The film examines the push-pull of attraction and rejection on a scope both intimate and global, finding the uneasy space where the two meet.

Chastain stars as Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy San Francisco philanthropist and socialite who runs a foundation that supports a ballet school in Mexico City. But Franco does not center her experience, but that of Fernando (Hernández), whom we meet first, escaping from the back of a box truck filled with migrants crossing the U.S./Mexico border, abandoned in San Antonio on a 100-degree day.

His journey is one of extreme survival, but his destination is the lap of luxury, a modernist San Francisco mansion where he makes himself at home, and where he’s clearly been at home before. A talented ballet dancer who has already once been deported, he’s risked everything to be with his lover, Jennifer, though as a high-profile figure who works with her father and brother (Rupert Friend), she’d rather keep her affair with Fernando under wraps. He’s her dirty little secret, but he’s also a human being who refuses to be kept in the shadows.

As Jennifer and Fernando attempt to navigate what it looks like for them to be together, it seems that larger forces will shatter their connection. In reality, the only real danger is each other.

The storytelling logic of “Dreams” is predicated on watching these characters move through space, the way we watch dancers do. Franco offers some fascinating parallels to juxtapose the wildly varying experiences of Fernando and Jennifer — he enters the States in a box truck, almost dying of thirst and heat stroke; she arrives in Mexico on a private plane, but they both enter empty homes alone, melancholy. During a rift in their relationship, Fernando retreats to a motel while working at a bar, drinking red wine out of plastic cups with a friend in his humble room, ignoring Jennifer’s calls, while she eats alone in her darkened dining room, drinking red wine out of crystal.

These comparisons aren’t exactly nuanced, but they are stark, and for most of the film, Franco just asks us to watch them move together, and apart, in a strange, avoidant pas de deux. Often dwarfed by architecture, their distinctive bodies in space are more important than the sparse dialogue that only serves to fill in crucial gaps in storytelling.

Cinematographer Yves Cape captures it all in crisp, saturated images. The lack of musical score (beyond diegetic music in the ballet scenes) contributes to the dry, flat affect and tone, as these characters enact increasing cruelties — both emotional and physical — upon each other as a means of trying to contain their lover, until it escalates into something truly dark and disturbing.

Franco, frankly, loses the plot of “Dreams” in the third act. What is a rather staid drama about the weight of social expectations on a relationship becomes a dramatically unexpected game of vengeance as Jennifer and Fernando grasp at any power they have over the other. She fetishizes him and he returns the favor, violently.

Ultimately, Franco jettisons his characters for the sake of unearned plot twists that leave the viewer feeling only icky. These events aren’t illuminating, and feel instead like a bleak betrayal. The circumstances of the story might be “timely,” but “Dreams” doesn’t help us understand the situation better, leaving us in the dark about what we’re supposed to take away from this story of sex, violence, money and the state. Anything it suggests we already know.