on the brink of being killed. Agnes In the film, she dies with her baby and haunts Ambrosio once as a ghost. She lives in the novel and has a much richer backstory and a happy ending where she ends up with Raymond (Cristobal in the film). The film shows her, but only to emphasize Ambrosio’s previous piety and insistence on following the rules and showing no mercy for sins that he later commits himself. Her whole back story and connection with her brother, Lorenzo, is not described in the film. The Devil Only appears as a human in the film. He appears in the first scene, making his presence known but not clear. His confession acts as an interesting beginning to the film as it shows how Ambrosio reacts to the horrific sins with no facial expressions and no judgement, even as he describes incest and sexual assault on a niece. Elvire’s murder In the novel he strangles his mother and gets away with the crime for a time, able to continue to scheme with Matilda (Valerio) about how to gain access to Antonia. In the film, he stabs Elvire and gets caught red handed. This is where he is captured, and he is then immediately shown on trial. A serpent, not centipede, bites Ambrosio in the rose garden. In Lewis’ novel, a serpent bites Ambrosio, making an obvious connection to the Biblical story of Satan disguised as a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Moll’s adaptation features a centipede biting and poisoning Ambrosio. Death of the accusatory friar This scene is not in the novel at all. No other monks suspect Ambrosio at any point. It adds another bloody crime to the internal and previously just sexual crimes committed in the monastery. Or it was supernatural intervention to help Ambrosio and Valerio, either way it is only in the movie. No familial connections outside of Ambrosio/Elvire/Antonia are discussed. In the novel, Lorenzo is Agnes’ brother. Agnes is in love and trying to run away with Lorenzo’s friend Raymond (Cristobal in the film). Reception Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 63% approval rating, based on 35 reviews, with an average score of 5.8/10. Its consensus reads, "Visually sharp but only occasionally gripping, The Monk is still watchable thanks in part to Vincent Cassel's charismatic performance." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews