Is it Christmas already? Have we done good and now the karmic wheel has made a full revolution? Because soon after Longlegs, we are getting another film—The Monkey—from Oswood Perkins that's due in February 2025. And one that's produced by James Wan and is based on a short story by Stephen King.

The crib notes for King's short story is about a man called Hal who finds a cymbal-banging monkey toy and learns that whenever it clangs its cymbals, somebody close to him dies. In a bid to escape the monkey's curse, he tosses it into a lake and the tale ends with a newspaper article talking about the mysterious death of a school of fish from said lake.

Now, we haven't seen the film adaptation of The Monkey but if the trailer is anything to go by, the movie looks bananas. In the film, Theo James plays twin brothers, who found their father's toy monkey, who causes people to die in very gruesome ways. They discard the toy and live their separate lives until unexplained deaths suddenly occur and now the brothers are on a quest to rid this evil toy.

The trailer looks like it could be a black comedy. With the toe-tapping “Let the Good Times Roll” by Shirley and Lee playing in the background as the bodies pile up (electrocution; immolation; a lot of blood), it looks like fun for the whole (Manson) family.

Then again, it could just be a marketing ploy. After all, the distributor, Neon—who was also behind Longlegs marketing—is known for their unorthodox promotion. We'll only know if it's a straight horror when the film drops next year. The Monkey also stars other interesting actors like Elijah Woods (Master Frodo!), Tatiana Maslany (duplicates!) and Sarah Levy (Schitt's Creek!).

The Monkey will be released in theatres on 21 February 2025.