Crank your organ grinder (no, that’s not a euphemism) and prepare for February to get your heart pumping harder than trying to decide what to buy your partner for Valentine’s Day because Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey teaser poster is here. Perkins, who delivered one of this year’s best thrillers with Longlegs, is adapting the short story from Stephen King for screens, with James Wan and Michael Clear along for the terrifying ride. The Monkey teaser poster follows August’s trailer tease for the upcoming horror movie featuring a wind-up monkey with spiraling eyes and a Cheshire grin.
The Monkey teaser poster is simplistic in design. It shows the sinister monkey smiling in the dark as a beam of light illuminates its blood-red eye. You can almost hear the rat-tat-tat of the monkey’s little drum as he plays a haunted song.
Perkins wrote the screenplay for The Monkey, based on King’s short story. The film tells the following story: When twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths start occurring all around them. The brothers throw the monkey away and move on, growing apart over the years. But when the mysterious deaths begin again, the brothers must reunite to find a way to destroy the monkey for good before it takes the lives of everyone close to them.
James Wan and Michael Clear are producing The Monkey for Atomic Monster, while Jason Cloth and Dave Caplan are producing for C2 Motion Picture Group. Executive producers include Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger of Automatik, Peter Luo and Nancy Xu of Stars Collective, John Friedberg of Black Bear, and Chris Ferguson. Atomic Monster and Stars Collective developed the project, and C2 Motion Picture Group provided the financing.
The Monkey is already getting under my skin. Haunted object horror is one of my favorite sub-genres, and my grandfather once owned a wind-up monkey that looked strikingly like the one in Perkins’ film, so I’m a little freaked out. It’s a shame we must wait until February 21, 2025, to check this one out, but if Longlegs is any indication, it’ll be worth the wait.