Retelling of Stephen King short story seen at The Light Cinema, Wisbech

Film review: The Monkey (15) - seen at The Light Cinema

Starring: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery and Colin O'Brien

Director: Osgood Perkins Run time: One hour, 38 minutes

I've said it many times before but it's really difficult to translate Stephen King books into films.

He's been my favourite author for 30-plus years but I do find the wonderful worlds he weaves on his pages are seldom the same on the big screen. They rely so much on the reader going along with the story and using their own imagination.

And what's with the plucking of obscure short stories such as this and last year's The Boogeyman rather than his still-brilliant novels? Easier to secure the rights, I suppose.

Anyway, this story from 1985's Skeleton Crew collection actually doesn't rely too much on the reader's imagination and could have made a good film if it was a great story... but it's simply not one of his best.

Narration straight from the book reminds me how much I love King’s prose but The Monkey not up there with the best stories in the excellent Skeleton Crew and was there to be read, enjoyed and forgotten about... it didn't deserve the £10million the movie cost, even though that's low budget these days.

The comedy-horror centres around twin brothers Bill and Hal who find their absconded father's old monkey toy in the attic, leading to a series of gruesome deaths.

The siblings decide to throw the toy away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years… but the monkey returns and so do the deaths.

Knowing how ridiculously large the scale of deaths is, the director decides to make the fatalities humorous. No harm with that but it doesn't really work so they are neither shockingly gory or comically crass.

In typical King fashion, there’s more going on than just the horror story, with focus also given to the sibling relationship of Hal and Bill and the father and son dynamic between Hal and Petey. Theo James is impressive as grown-up Hal and Bill and Colin O’Brien shines as Petey.

The film was good enough to keep me invested but it’s not one that will live long in the memory.

Rating: 6/10

By Jeremy Ransome