Stephen King Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

The Monkey
(2025)

Director – Osgood Perkins – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 98m

****

An automaton monkey found by two twins causes horrific deaths to people around them – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 21st

This sets its tone early on with a framing story in which a junk store owner is asked by mild-mannered, bespectacled protagonist Hal (Theo James, who also plays his twin brother Bill) to take a clockwork monkey off his hands, insisting that the object, whatever it might be, is not a toy. The store owner is sceptical. More fool him, because he is about to undergo one of many sudden, gruesome and unexpected deaths of which the film offers a gorehound’s smorgasboard.

Other notable characters include their mum Lois (Tatania Maslany from Woman in Gold, Simon Curtis, 2015; Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg, 2007), Hal’s estranged son Petey (Colin O’Brien from Wonka, Paul King, 2023) and Petey’s stepfather Ted (Elijah Wood from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, 2001-3).

This Stephen King adaptation comes from the school of horror films which are, basically, an excuse for staging a series of sudden, gruesome and unexpected deaths. Inventiveness is high on the menu, provided you accept that killing multiple people in unique and spectacular ways can be said to be inventive.… Read the rest

The Boogeyman

Director – Rob Savage – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 98m

*** 1/2

Two sisters recently bereaved of their mother start to imagine something nasty waiting for them in the darkness of night – Stephen King adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 2nd

An uninvited man Lester Billings (David Dalmachian) turns up at the home-based office of therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina) wanting to talk. His family died, and he is suspected of murdering them… but, he claims, it wasn’t him who did it. Harper has recently lost his wife, so it’s inevitable that Billings’ story will resonate with him. While Harper excuses himself to covertly call the police, Billings starts wandering round the home in which Harper lives with his two daughters – the teenage Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and the much younger Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair).

The scene in the office is the Stephen King short story (published in his Night Shift collection) and only a small part of the movie. It is, however, a highly significant part – the incident that sparks everything else off. Billings claims his family was slain by a hideous monster, and the impressionable Sawyer is at the age of childhood where she imagines monsters lurking in the closet or hiding beneath the bed.… Read the rest