10 Recent Horror Movies That Were ALMOST Amazing

Osgood Perkins' The Monkey is mostly a banger alright - a darkly hilarious horror that uses a creepy cursed toy monkey to tee up a bevy of insane, Final Destination-esque death scenes.

Perkins clearly relishes mining the blacker-than-black comedy from these grisly sequences, though also invests audiences in the story of identical twin protagonists Hal and Bill Shelburn (Theo James).

It's smooth sailing for the most part, but as with Perkins' previous horror hit Longlegs, he struggles to bring things to a satisfactory close with a third act that goes rather off the rails.

For one, the climactic conflict takes an intriguing sibling rivalry and makes it needlessly convoluted, but beyond that it also has some less-than-stellar CGI, and a head-scratcher of a final scene that's unsurprisingly split audiences down the middle.

There's so much here to savour, from the striking visuals to the deadpan comedy and Theo James' terrific two-hander in the lead roles, but the slightly limp, unassured ending leaves it feeling less than the sum of its parts.