Fresh from the success of Longlegs, Osgood Perkins goes back 40 years to Stephen King’s Skeleton crew to adapt his short story, The Monkey. As we look at book vs film, we’ll ask whether he does a good job with this adaptation.
Stephen King certainly has a great body of work in his short stories. A number in this collection have already been adapted. We’ve had both a film and TV series of the opening novella The Mist. The Raft is a wonderful segment in Creepshow II. A couple of the others have also made their way into TV shows. So what took so long with The Monkey?
In many ways, The Monkey is your archetypal King story. We have childhood trauma coming back to haunt the same protagonists as adults; we have characters and family histories that come to life in a very short word count; we have some pretty high stakes for the protagonist. What the short story does have, though, is an ending which works for a short story, but is unlikely to work as a satisfactory conclusion for a film.
Osgood Perkins, who not only directed but also wrote the sceen adaptation maintains a lot from the original. Most of the characters, particularly in the past are present. The monkey causes death. Hal desperately tries to get rid of the monkey, but the damned thing keeps coming back. But there’s one huge difference which makes this a very different story, which we’ll come to shortly. There’s a shift in the time line to account for the story being 40 years old. The present of the original was the 1980s, and the past some 20-30 years earlier. Here, the past is late 90s, and the present 2024. That said, it’s not really a factor in the movie at all. The choice of soundtrack, if anything, makes the time period a little more blurry.
The story focuses on the Shelburn brothers, Hal and Bill. In both versions, the monkey is a relic of their absent father. In both versions it leads to the deaths of several people close to them. Where the film shines is in presenting these deaths. They’re incredibly gory, and very inventively done. This film is dripping in blood. Eventually, the brothers decide they have to get rid of the monkey, but of course, it returns to create havoc again once they’re adults.
This film is dripping in blood.
The short story meanders between past and present a little more than the movie, which is largely chronologic. Perkins makes a choice to significantly change the brothers in the present. Grief over the monkey-caused deaths has affeted them very differently. Hal can’t form close relationships becase he worries death will come for anyone he gets close to. Bill is full of fury. It makes sense to present the brothers in this way. It’s not in the story, but it needed some development from the 40 pages we had in Skeleton Crew. For me, it’s one of the weaker aspects of the movie, though. Both characters have gone too far into their shells, and don’t seem like realistic human characters.
I get that’s what Perkins was after, making the whole thing larger than life not only in the individual moments of horror the monkey causes, but in the lasting effects on people’s lives too. Perkins goes to great lengths to make Bill deeply unpleasant, but it’s still also looking for laughs, but that didn’t quite hit the mark either. I just can’t laugh as a kid being bullied to that extent. Aside from a couple of misses in that way, it still entertained me throughout.
But there’s just one crucial difference which totally changes this, and we’re almost at it.
And this significant change, it’s not about the monkey’s instrument. In the King story, the monkey has cmybals. In the film it has a drum. That aspect makes literally no difference at all. Apparently, the change has something to do with Disney holding copyright on images of monkey toys with cymbals after Toy Story 3. Frankly, the idea that you can copyright the look of a well-known children’s toy that pre-dates the movie in which it is used is quite ridiculous.
The Big difference…
The huge change which I’m talking about is the catalyst for the monkey’s monderous mayhem. In the film, the deaths only occur when someone turns the key in the back of the monkey, starting off a period of time which will culminate in someone’s death. Basically, if no one turns the key, no one dies. But in the book, the monkey is faulty. It will randomly start to play the cymbals, and if you hear them, you know that someone is going to die. What this does is change who our antagonist is, which is pretty crucial. In the film, the problem is someone keeps turning that damned key, and as a result people keep dying (and to be honest, in the movie those ridiculous deaths and incredible).
In the story, though, no matter what they do to try to get rid of the monkey, it keeps coming back. So when Hal sees the monkey for the first time in 20-30 years, he has a whole world of new fears. He’s got a wife and children now, and if that monkey’s cymbals start to crash together, one of them could possibly die. The antagonist is this evil monkey. It has a much greater power than a human willingly choosing to set it off. Its presence theri on the windowsill is a far more terrifying prospect.
The Verdict
Trying to decide whether a movie is better that the text upon which it is based is never easy. You have to accept that as different mediums, they’re not going to be mirror images of one another. The short story, like much of King’s work, is an absolute masterclass in delivering believable characters in dire situations in very few words. The idea is chilling, and it works perfectly in the two different time settings. I like the ending, but I know it’s not for everyone. Oz Perkins takes this and turns it into something different. Film allows for these ridiculously gory death scenes. They’re shockingly over-the-top, but they work here. You’d never describe them on the page in this way. With the overblown gore, it’s logical to play it for laughs as a black comedy, but it doesn’t always work with the characters. The present time frame versions of the brothers aren’t nearly as likelable at the present day characters in the story. But it entertains throughout, and delivers a proper conclusion to that storyline. Despite the differences, it’s a successful adaptation, and well worth seeing.