THE JOLLY MONKEY: What Else Would You Expect From The Asylum?

THE JOLLY MONKEY (DVD)

2025 / 93 min

The Asylum

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

Those lovable lunatics at The Asylum are back at it. Being the undisputed kings of the “mockbuster,” taking time to review damn near any of their movies is almost an exercise in redundancy. People either hate them because they’re barely disguised rip-offs, or love them because they’re barely disguised rip-offs.

This time we’re getting The Jolly Monkey, it’s title and cover art obviously created to evoke Osgood Perkin’s recent Stephen King adaptation, The Monkey. Comparing the two is, of course, pointless, but not just in terms of overall quality. It’s already a given that it’s gonna be cheaper, cheesier and cast with actors who don’t even warrant their own Wikipedia page (nor does the movie, for that matter).

But plotwise, The Jolly Monkey kinda goes in a different direction. It’s more of a slasher movie about two sisters and their families inheriting a dilapidated old motel once owned by their parents. While bickering over whether to sell the property or restore it, they’re being killed-off one by one by a murderer in a monkey costume, who also slices off their faces.

"What's the problem? You said dress formal."

The story also clumsily throws in supernatural elements related to all the beat-up old toy monkeys laying around the place. Additionally, it turns out the family has a dark past, especially the sisters’ dad, who was both a hide-tanning expert and serial killer in his spare time. As for who’s knocking everybody off this time around, viewers will have no trouble figuring it out the killer's identity because there’s no such thing as subtlety in their performance. But at least it is a performance, which can’t really be said about the rest of the cast.

Because of the mostly serious tone, silly dialogue, dumb characters and a villain that elicits more chuckles than scares, The Jolly Monkey is more of an unintentional comedy than a horror film (though a couple of death scenes are pretty good). But with The Asylum pulling the strings (including the purse strings), that shouldn’t come as a surprise…or a disappointment, either.