Stephen King is a household name for horror lovers and casual movie enjoyers everywhere. King's work is legendary, so much so, that even people who don't like horror will often make an exception for a movie inspired by one of King's stories. The newest project to join King's long list of horror legends brought to life on the big screen is The Monkey, based on a 1980 short story of the same name.

This new movie has gained a lot of traction for being creative and over-the-top, with high praise from critics and fans alike. That said, many people leave The Monkey feeling like what they just watched didn't feel much like a Stephen King story. It doesn't fit in much with his typical style and that's partly because the movie changed a lot from the original story. Despite the many differences, director Osgood "Oz" Perkins said Stephen King himself had no notes for him regarding how much the film changed from the short story.

Stephen King's vintage short story "The Monkey" was first published in 1980 as an independent booklet that was included in an issue of Gallery magazine. Five years later, King heavily edited and finessed the short story and included it in a Stephen King collection called Skeleton Crew. "The Monkey" told the story of a cursed, cymbal-banging monkey that would cause death or other horrible catastrophes to happen when it played the cymbals.

This is where the first major difference between Stephen King's "The Monkey" and The Monkey (2025) comes into play. Cymbal-banging monkey toys are nothing new. Moviegoers have seen them before, both on the silver screen and perhaps even in real life. The monkey depicted in King's short story is one such monkey, but the toy shown in the movie is equipped with a drum and two drumsticks instead of cymbals.

The reason for this change comes down to copyright issues. In 2010, Disney and Pixar added a cymbal-banging monkey to their line-up of toys that come to life when no humans are around to catch them in Toy Story 3. Due to the monkey's inclusion, Disney actually copyrighted the cymbal-banging monkey, so Oz Perkins wasn't able to stay true to King's original vision for "The Monkey's" main antagonist. Instead, the monkey became a drummer, which worked incredibly well for the film. Perkins even admitted to liking it more than the original cymbal-banging monkey in an interview with GameRadar+.

The monkey's design wasn't the only major difference between King's original short story and the 2025 film adaptation, though. "The Monkey" was a much more serious story that followed Hal Shelburn and his two sons, Dennis and Petey. The story opens with Hal as an adult and his oldest son, Dennis, finding the cursed monkey in the attic of the home Hal grew up in. Dennis' discovery triggers a series of traumatic flashbacks for Hal, where he re-lives some of the worst moments of his life caused by the monkey.

Whenever the monkey banged its cymbals together, something horrible happened. It wasn't always death, but it usually involved death. Some of Hal's flashbacks include Johnny McCabe, his childhood friend, falling out of a tree house and dying and his aunt's cat being hit by a car. After determining that the monkey was at fault for all the misfortune, Hal tries to get rid of the creepy toy by tossing it down a well. Hal has no idea how the monkey managed to resurface or get back into his childhood home for his son to find. All Hal can be certain of is that his family will never be safe with the monkey around, so he takes matters into his own hands to get rid of the toy once and for all.

The story ends with Hal and his youngest son, Petey, taking the monkey to Crystal Lake. Together, they put the monkey in a bag filled with rocks and tossed it into the lake. Hal can hear the monkey's cymbals banging together as the bag sinks. The monkey tries to take Hal with him by breaking Hal's boat apart, but he swims ashore to safety. The same cannot be said for the wildlife in Crystal Lake, though, as the monkey's descent kills hundreds of the lake's fish.

The Monkey (2025) takes a lot of creative liberty with King's source material. The movie includes two of the main characters from the short story, but it adds a few characters that were never mentioned in the source material. Besides the monkey's design, however, the biggest difference between Stephen King's "The Monkey" and Oz Perkins' The Monkey is the tonal shift. As mentioned, King's short story tells a serious story about a cursed toy that has haunted Hal Shelburn since childhood.

Perkins' film adaptation takes a much more comedic approach to the story. The Monkey is a horror film, but it's a horror comedy that relies on ridiculous, unbelievable deaths and exaggerated gore. In an interview with Empire, Oz Perkins described The Monkey as an extreme film and promised that nothing would be subtle.

The over-the-top deaths, extreme gore, and comedic elements all severely deviate from King's original short story. After all, one of Hal's most traumatic memories is his friend falling to his death from a tree house. That's a far cry from a woman's stove setting fire to her head, the woman running through her home with her head still on fire, tripping down her porch, and impaling her face on her mailbox post (yes, that is an actual death in the movie). The Monkey gives the term "freak accident" a whole new meaning because each death is more ludicrous than the last.

In addition to the massive tonal change, The Monkey also shifts focus to Hal and his twin brother, Bill. The film opens with Hal and Bill as kids. Hal can't stand Bill because Bill bullies him relentlessly. The boys find the drummer monkey in their father's closet after their father walked out on them. Hal and Bill discover that if they turn a golden key on the monkey's back, it will lift one hand into the air, spin its drumstick, and then play the drum sitting in its lap eventually. The monkey only plays the drum before it's about to strike, though. When the monkey bangs on its drum, someone nearby is going to die.

Hal inevitably turns the key with the hope that the monkey will kill his brother, Bill. The monkey doesn't take requests, though, and kills Hal and Bill's mother, Lois, instead. Together, Bill and Hal dispose of the monkey by wrapping chains around its box and dropping it into a well. Unbeknownst to Hal, Bill later returns to the well to retrieve the monkey. He doesn't find the cursed toy, but he does find the monkey's key, which he keeps. Bill spends most of his adult life searching for the monkey, so he can use it to get revenge on his brother for killing their mom.

Again, the monkey doesn't take requests, so even when Bill inevitably gets his hands on the monkey, the monkey refuses to kill Hal, and Bill wreaks havoc on the town they grew up in because he won't stop turning the key. Bill's petty quest for vengeance is eventually his undoing, as the monkey grows so distraught with Bill's ire that the monkey targets him. The monkey is petty about it, though, as it waits until Bill and Hal reconcile before killing Bill right in front of Hal and his son, Petey. Dennis, Hal's older son in the short story, is never mentioned.

The movie also ends on a completely different note as well. Instead of trying to dispose of the monkey, Hal and Petey decide to keep it. They don't plan to use it to hurt anyone else, they simply mean to keep an eye on the monkey. If they know where the monkey is and keep the monkey's key away from it, no one else will be able to use it. Hal insists that they have to accept that the monkey belongs to them because it's the only way to keep it from harming them again.

To put it bluntly, The Monkey (2025) doesn't really feel like a Stephen King story. Most King fans expect a certain level of refined finesse associated with everything his name appears on. Movies like Carrie (1976, 2013), It (1990, 2017), The Shining (1980), and The Mist (2007) all tell wildly different stories, but they all share some key King elements. They're all supernatural horror to some degree. The Mist and It both tell stories of mysterious, otherworldly monsters preying on humanity, while Carrie and The Shining focus on humanity being the monsters, with some sprinkle of supernatural abilities thrown in.

Perhaps most importantly, these movies and the stories they're based on take themselves very seriously. Yes, they might have comedic moments to help break up the tension, but they aren't horror comedies. They aim to tell compelling and scary stories, but they never go out of their way to be as outrageous as possible. King isn't entirely a stranger to ridiculous concepts. Christine, for example, is a short story about a possessed car that received a film adaptation in 1983. Despite the campy idea, even this movie didn't try to market itself as a comedy.

The Monkey stands out among many films based on Stephen King's work because it embraces the comedy and ridiculous nature of the story more than most other King adaptations. The Monkey doesn't take itself too seriously and understands the powerful impact of constantly upping the ante. What's happening on screen is horrifying, but it's so laughably unbelievable and mesmerizing, that it's hard to look away. Viewers have to keep watching because they need to know how the next tragedy will top the one they just witnessed. Amidst all the violent chaos, the movie still manages to deliver a powerful message about death and how it is the one thing all humans share.

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  stephen king