The Jolly Monkey

Honestly? The Jolly Monkey completely surprised me. People call it a knockoff of The Monkey, but I actually enjoyed it way more. It's faster, creepier, and doesn't waste time with forced drama. The design of the monkey is seriously unsettling, and the movie knows exactly what it is - fun, intense horror that doesn't pretend to be something else. Even the ending hit the right tone for me. Way more effective than expected. I had a great time watching this. The practical effects were surprisingly solid, and the atmosphere kept me hooked all the way through. The only minor downside was that some of the kill scenes felt a bit simple and awkward, but it didn't take away from the overall experience.

Stumbling upon the 2025 horror movie "The Jolly Monkey" by random chance, and given my love of all things horror, of course I had to check out the movie. Sure, I had never even heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it, so I virtually didn't know what I was in for. But the movie's cover was actually interesting enough to make me stop and take notice.

Truth be told, I thought that this was going to be a mockbuster from The Asylum, cashing in on the recent Stephen King movie "The Monkey".

The storyline in the movie, as written by Ryan Ebert, was watchable for sure, but it was also a rather generic script. The narrative was a bit sluggish, and writer Ryan Ebert didn't really bring anything particularly grand to the horror genre.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with Patrick Labyorteaux and Anthony Jensen. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

The effects in "The Jolly Monkey" were nothing outstanding. In fact, the movie didn't really make much use of special effects in general.

My rating of writer and director Ryan Ebert's 2025 movie "The Jolly Monkey" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

Every single character has such stiff and awful line delivery and acting. Also the dialogue just generally sounded so unrealistic, no one talks like this. The camera was constantly panning and changing angles, like pointing at whoever was talking in a conversation despite them being literally right next to each other. Just have the camera zoomed out so they fit in frame. On top of that the camera was constantly shaking. General premise of the story with what the motel was for and the killers motive had potential but how it was actually carried out was awful. Movie kind of seems like it was just trying to ride the tail coat of "The Monkey" movie that came out recently. Also movie, you did not have to have the thimble clapping during the *entire* credits. Should've had it fade out after the screen fades to black to the credit music.

The Jolly Monkey is a blatant cash-in of Osgood Perkins' The Monkey, but this film was clearly rushed into production before writer/director Ryan Ebert had the opportunity to find out what The Monkey was actually about. Consequently, The Jolly Monkey bears very little resemblance to Perkins' film -- the toy monkeys don't even play drums, but clash cymbals instead -- but the similar title and copycat poster might just fool people into watching the knock-off as a result.

To be fair, The Jolly Monkey is only slightly worse than The Monkey, a film that -- much like Perkins' Longlegs -- definitely didn't deserve the hype. Ebert's film is poorly acted, takes an age to get going, and doesn't know whether it wants to be a slasher or a supernatural horror, winding up a half-assed mixture of the two, but at least it has no pretensions. The plot sees the Blythe family and their relatives inheriting an old motel with a dark secret: those who checked in didn't always get the chance to check out, falling victim to a killer who removed children's faces, sewing them onto toy monkeys. Not long after arriving, members of the family fall victim to a knife wielding psycho in a monkey costume. And there's a ghost.

I rate The Jolly Monkey 3.5/10 for the cheapo gore, rounded down to 3 for the terrible casting - Jenny and Marshall Blythe look absolutely nothing like their parents - and for Dominic Keating's man-bun: there's no excuse.

This is just a cheap, and very bad rip off of The Monkey (2025) which is based on a Stephen King story.

This copy is written by a guy who seems to take a look at what big-budget movies Hollywood is gonna make, then write a cheap knock-off version of his own and clobber it together as quickly as possible to cash-in on, what can only be assumed as viewers confusing it for the bigger budget, better written release.

It's a real pity that some writers can only seem to create anything when they['re ripping-off other people's ideas, but here we are!

If I were you, I'd save your time and just go watch The Monkey (2025) instead!