7 Movies to Watch After The Monkey 

The Monkey is the latest horror movie by Osgood Perkins, but it’s admittedly a very different kind of horror experience from his previous cult-hit film, Longlegs. It remains to be seen how horror fans receive The Monkey, but there’s already significant buzz that it, too, will become a cult-hit horror film that further cements Perkins as a new maestro of the the genre. As such, there will likely be a lot of viewers who come away from The Monkey wanting to keep that same vibe going – and we can help with that.

The sub-genre of horror-comedy is definitely where The Monkey belongs, as its story of a cursed object with the god-like power to kill is mined for quite a lot of dark laughs. That said, the themes of the film continue Perkins’ exploration of generational legacy and how it can be both good and bad all at once. The actual mechanics of how The Monkey creates its ominous threat and executes its kills also set it alongside a very select set of horror films. Recreating such an experience isn’t easy, but thankfully horror offers enough variety and uniqueness that we can get the job done.

Here are the 7 best movies to watch after The Monkey.

Honorable Mention: It’s What’s Inside

It’s new, it’s from a talented new writer/director (Greg Jardin), and it’s so unique that it’s hard to classify – which is why it is totally twinning with The Monkey, in spirit. It’s What Inside is a sci-fi/comedy/horror/mystery about a longtime group of friends, who reunite for a wedding weekend celebration after years apart. The turn in the story comes when one member of the crew, a tech bro, shows up with a mysterious device that allows people to temporarily trade bodies with one another. However, when the group turns that sci-fi twist into a twisted game of “Guess Who?”, a few of them seize the opportunity of wearing another skin to do some dark things and revel in some deeply repressed feelings.

Like The Monkey, It’s What’s Inside does an (almost too) good job of revealing how our most important personal connections can also be wells of darkness and trauma – with some twisted humor to balance things out.

You can stream the film on Netflix.

The Menu

The Menu is Mark Mylod’s twisted 2022 cult-hit “black comedy horror” film, and if that description doesn’t give it away, it’s a hard movie to categorize. The film follows a group of “elite” guests who are invited to a private island to attend a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience at one of the world’s most exclusive restaurants. However, when the collection of guests gets to the table, they find out that the restaurant’s celebrated chef, Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has gathered them to teach a dark lesson, as much as serve the food.

Tonally, The Menu is much more dry and witty with its black comedy humor than The Monkey, but what makes it great companion viewing is its uniqueness: there simply isn’t another horror-comedy movie like it. The Menu is a high-brow horror story about one man’s madness and despair over his deep disconnection from his life, passion and art – but it’s also not afraid to shock viewers with sudden turns into horrific moments, as well as a finale that understandably leaves jaws hanging.

The Menu also has one of the best ensemble casts in horror, with Fiennes being joined by Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Nicholas Hoult (Superman), Janet McTeer (Ozark), John Leguizamo (Ice Age), Arturo Castro (Broad City) and others.

It’s currently streaming on Netflix.

Final Destination

The Monkey uses an unseen hand of fate, the Devil, or some other vague supernatural presence to dispatch victims, and no franchise does that kind of work better than the Final Destination films. Starting with the 2000 original, these five films are major staples of 2000s horror, and the perfect vibe you want after watching a film like The Monkey.

At the center of the franchise are the Rube Goldberg machine mechanics as “Death” manipulates various nearby objects and situations to cause chain reaction events that end with a predetermined victim meeting a grisly end. The dread levels of these death sequences range from ironically goofy (most of the later installments) to ‘it will haunt you forever’ (the opening highway sequence in the second installment). If nothing else, The Final Destination films have made it impossible to assume you are ever safe from Death’s reach at any time. In any place. Ever.

With a new installment called Final Destination: Bloodlines finally arriving this year (14 years after the last film), it’s the perfect time to catch up with the franchise.

Final Destination movies can be streamed on Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Sling TV.

This Is The End

If you see The Monkey then you know just how over-the-top the Monkey’s destructive rampage eventually becomes, even as its protagonist Hal Shelburn (Theo James) manages to get some of his personal issues worked out. Well, few horror comedies have explored the idea of personal bonds getting tightened at apocalyptic moments better than This Is the End.

This 2013 film took writers-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg took the next level, by taking their real lives in Hollywood and their select group of friends from the Judd “Apatow Mafia” crew and exaggerating it into an end-of-the-world horror movie parable about Hollywood’s downfall. The “crew” in question includes Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Martin Starr, and Michael Cera, with a lineup of celebrity cameos that shocked viewers in 2013 – and probably still would today. Like The Monkey, the sudden “WTF?!” shifts from grounded reality to utter supernatural absurdity are half the fun of This Is the End.

You can rent it to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Happy Death Day

It’s hard to make death funny – and nearly impossible to do it within the confines of a PG-13 rating – but Happy Death Day manages to do both. The film follows a college girl named Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) who has a night of partying end in her own murder at the hands of a masked serial killer – only to wake up and find she’s stuck in the loop of reliving her last day, which allows Tree to investigate her killing and hopefully prevent it.

Happy Death Day got hype for blending a Groundhog Day style with the horror genre, as well as the twistedly fun ways Tree either dies inadvertently or tries to end things and escape her loop. It may not get to revel in the full gory fun of repeat carnage as The Monkey does, but Happy Death Day ends up delivering a surprisingly deep story about personal loss and how we (do or do not) deal with it.

Happy Death Day can be rented and streamed on Amazon Prime Video.

Ready or Not

Before they hit mainstream success with Scream VI, the “Radio Silence” collective (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet) scored a cult hit with their 2019 horror-comedy-thriller Ready or Not. Like The Monkey, the premise of Ready or Not sees a woman named Grave (Samara Weaving) marry into a wealthy family that turns out to have a dark supernatural curse hanging over it. As part of an occult ritual, Grace is forced to play a life-or-death version of “Hide and Seek” against her new family members.

There may not be a film that offers a closer viewing experience to The Monkey, than Ready or Not. It showcases a talented UK star (Weaving); has dark story twists based on twisted family secrets, and has a tendency to suddenly veer into over-the-top gore with its kills. The final act of the film is pretty legendary, and definitely places Ready or Not in the same lineup of horror-comedy film binges as The Monkey.

You can stream it on Hulu-Disney+.

The Cabin in the Woods

There’s a good chance you’ve heard about Drew Goodard’s The Cabin in the Woods, even if you haven’t seen it. There’s a good reason for that: few have pulled off the kind of bait-and-switch that Cabin in the Woods does and get away with it – let alone make it work to the film’s advantage.

In the spirit of non-spoilers, we won’t get into the big twist of The Cabin in the Woods – we’ll only say that the film starts as a traditional supernatural-horror story about a group of stereotypical college kid victims who travel to a freaky place, and have it go predictably badly. However, the film then expands into a much more smart and meta-minded satire about horror storytelling, and why so many of us revel in it. By the time of the final act, the film gets so ridiculously over-the-top gory and apocalyptic it’s hard to find a moment to catch your breath (from laughing). One of the best in modern horror, period.

You can stream it on Amazon Prime Video.

Shaun of the Dead

This is one of the best horror comedies of all time – and also happens to be one of the best zombie horror movies of all time. The creative team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (working with actor Nick Frost) would become known to the world based on this low-budget 2004 UK film, and spawn an entire “Three Flavors Cornetto” trilogy of films that includes the equally epic buddy-cop satire Hot Fuzz and the apocalyptic comedy The World’s End.

While The World’s End may seem like the most direct twin to The Monkey, it’s actually Shaun of the Dead‘s downtrodden titular character, Shaun (Pegg), that makes the film a spiritual companion to Perkins’ film. Shaun’s arc from selfish, lazy, and obtuse slacker to heroic warrior-survivor of the zompocalypse is worth the journey – and Wright sets it against the hilariously grim backdrop of 2000s suburban London being overrun by the undead. From the social commentary to the character work to the actual heart-pounding thrills, Shaun of the Dead is one-of-one when it comes to horror-comedy.

You can rent it to stream on Amazon Prime Video.