As stated above, the first half-hour (give or take) of “The Monkey” remains pretty true to King’s story. In that story, a man named Hal Shelburn is cleaning out a dead relative’s house with the help of his wife and two sons. While digging through piles of junk, Hal’s kids find a wind-up toy monkey. Hal is horrified to see the doll, and for good reason — it has the power to kill! To be clear: this isn’t a Chucky situation, where the doll runs around bumping people off. Instead, there’s some sort of dark supernatural power radiating from the monkey that results in various random deaths.Â
In the story, we learn that the monkey was first acquired by Hal’s father, a Merchant Marine who vanished when Hal was a kid. This is King pulling from his own history: when he was young, his own father, also a Merchant Marine, abandoned the family. Like King, Hal never learns what really happened to his dad — but he suspects the evil monkey had something to do with it. Perkins’ film changes things up slightly here: we’re treated to a prologue with Hal’s father, played by Adam Scott in a surprise cameo, trying to get rid of the monkey by giving it back to the pawn shop where he acquired it. (Also: the father’s occupation has been changed from a Merchant Marine to an airline pilot). The monkey ends up causing the death of the pawn shop owner, and Scott’s character then tries to destroy the toy with a flamethrower that (amusingly) happens to be lying around. After this, we never see Scott’s character again and never learn what happened to him. After this, young Hal and his twin brother Bill (both played by Christian Convery) inexplicably find the monkey in a closet. The boys soon make the horrifying discovery that whenever someone winds up the key on the monkey’s back, someone else will die (the only “rule” seems to be that the monkey never kills the person who wound it up).
This is somewhat true to the story, which is mostly told via flashbacks. In the story, the adult Hal remembers the monkey causes several deaths when he was a child, including the death of Hal’s babysitter and his own mother. Perkins keeps these details in the film, but alters them here and there. For instance: Hal’s babysitter in the story is named Beulah, which is also the name of a real babysitter Stephen King had as a child. The story reveals that shortly after Hal wound up the monkey, Beulah was killed by her boyfriend, who shot her during an argument. In the film, however, the babysitter has been renamed Annie Wilkes (played by Danica Dreyer). King fans will recognize that name: it’s the name of the psychotic fan from King’s novel “Misery,” played so memorably by Oscar-winner Kathy Bates in the “Misery” movie. Annie’s death in “The Monkey” movie is far more colorful than a shooting: her head is accidentally cut off by a hibachi chef.Â
In the story, young Hal, realizing the monkey is evil and killing people (and pets), chucks the damn thing into a well and hopes to never see it again. But sure enough, the monkey resurfaces when Hal is an adult. As the story draws to an end, Hal attempts to rid himself of the monkey once and for all by sinking it in a lake with the help of his youngest son, Petey. In an epilogue, it’s revealed that all the fish within the lake have mysteriously died. None of this happens in the movie, though. Instead, Perkins mostly uses the flashback details of Hal as a child during the first half-hour of the film … and then changes the story considerably once Hal is an adult.Â