“The Monkey,” based on its namesake short story by Stephen King, released on Feb. 21 to excited horror fans, who expected a chilling adaptation filled with suspense and supernatural terror. However, the movie is enjoyable for the wrong reasons, with the comedic aspects of the film overshadowing its horror, further damaged by a storyline that was practically nonexistent.

As the title suggests, the film follows a cursed wind-up toy monkey that terrorizes the Shelburn family, as Bill Shelburn hopes to kill his twin brother Hal with it. Whenever the monkey begins beating its drums, a gruesome and gory death will soon follow.

A highlight of this movie is the dark humor that is often sprinkled into the horror. For example, when a young Hal screams at his brother not to wind up the “toy,” it instantly cuts to their uncle’s funeral with a priest delivering a brainless eulogy, implying the death was unimportant and like a joke.

However, the comedy is also detrimental because making the same jokes repeatedly feeds into the larger problem of excessive repetition through the movie.  

Every death in this film showcases this issue: somebody dies in an explosion of blood, and Hal plays it off with a comedic line. By the second half of the movie, the humor has completely died off.

Beyond its monotonous humor, the movie also fails to showcase the proper characters and plot points. For example, even though Bill’s humor was very enjoyable to watch, especially when mixed in with the eerie tone of the film, he hardly gets any screen time despite being the primary antagonist.

Another issue the movie has is that it does not feel like it has a storyline because there is no character or plot development. Instead, the majority of the film is dedicated to depicting a series of gory deaths that occur in similar fashion.

That being said, the relationship between Hal and Bill was very enjoyable to watch. They are both played by Theo James, who does an excellent job of conveying how different the characters are. While Hal is more timid and reasonable, Bill is more immature and almost acts cartoonish, and this character complexity adds to the narrative.

Though “The Monkey” was a pretty enjoyable watch, swinging from funny and thrilling to repetitive and boring, I left the theater wishing it would stop monkeying around.