Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Monkey (2025)
While director Oz Perkins’ The Monkey changed Stephen King’s source story quite a bit, switching one character for another fundamentally altered the plot for the better. The Monkey is adapted from Stephen King’s story of the same name from the collection Skeleton Crew, but it is fair to say that Longlegs director Oz Perkins took plenty of liberties with the source material. The Monkey’s bloodiest scenes are all unique to the movie, since the story doesn’t share its blackly comic tone and absurd, cartoonish levels of violence.
However, the biggest changes that Perkins made were in the movie’s story of sibling rivalry. In The Monkey, Theo James plays feuding brothers Hal and Bill Shelburne. The duo inherits a creepy toy monkey from their absent father that, once its key is turned, causes the violent, sudden death of a random innocent person. The Monkey’s funniest deaths play this premise for dark laughs, but Hal and Bill learn just how serious the curse is when their mother, Lois, is killed by the monkey when they are young teens.
Hal Actually Has Two Sons In Stephen King’s The Monkey Book
Oz Perkins’ Movie Dropped Petey’s Brother Dennis
From that point on, Hal and Bill embark on very different life paths. Hal spends years doing all he can to avoid ever encountering the monkey or its curse again, including avoiding any contact with his son Petey for fear of pᴀssing the curse on to him. The Monkey’s twist ending reveals that Bill took the opposite approach, obsessively searching for the monkey in the hopes of controlling its killings. Bill realized that Hal had accidentally killed their mother with the toy, but remained certain that there was some way to control the eponymous monster.
This plot is the movie’s biggest divergence from the story, since Hal has two sons and no twin brother in Stephen King’s “The Monkey.” The protagonist having two sons in the original short story could have really dulled the strained relationship between him and Petey, since it would have been less unique if it was shared with another child. Not only that, but losing out on the toxic sibling rivalry between Hal and Bill would make The Monkey a far slighter movie, and would render its commentary on the inevitability of death much less thoughtful.
The Monkey Movie Dropped Hal’s Second Son But Added His Twin Brother Bill
The Monkey’s Small Stephen King Story Change Has A Huge Impact
Throughout The Monkey, Bill and Hal’s divergent perspectives on the monkey’s curse offer two completely different readings of how trauma can cause a person to dissociate from the present. Bill is trapped in the past, constantly trying to find the monkey and kill his brother with it to prove that there is rhyme and reason to its killings. Until Aunt Ida’s death in The Monkey, Hal is constantly worried about the future, avoiding a relationship with his own son since he is so paralyzed by the fear that Pete’s future death will be his fault.
Both men are scarred by a formative tragedy that led them to try and control the rest of their lives.
Hal and Bill are pivotal to The Monkey’s success since, although they could not seem more different, they are both strangely similar. Both men are scarred by a formative tragedy that led them to try and control the rest of their lives, convinced that they could shape the vagaries of fate if only they knew how to control or avoid the monkey. As their mother warned them early on in the movie, death comes for everyone eventually. However, the duo don’t really learn this until the movie’s ending.
The Monkey’s Changes Mean Brothers Are Still A Key Part Of The Stephen King Movie
Oz Perkins’ Adaptation Is Primarily Focused On Hal, Bill, and Petey’s Relationships
While The Monkey’s biggest change was turning the sparse horror story into an uproariously funny horror-comedy, switching the focus to Hal and his brother instead of Hal and his two sons saved the King adaptation. There just isn’t enough dramatic weight in King’s original short story to sustain an entire movie’s runtime, whereas Bill and Hal’s tragic battle of wills ensures that a potentially silly premise ends up becoming surprisingly emotionally resonant.
Bill and Hal’s inability to see each other’s perspectives ends up shaping The Monkey. As such, it is tough to see how the plot of the movie could have worked as well without the pair being twins. If The Monkey had focused on Hal trying to keep his two sons safe from the тιтular threat, The Monkey’s Final Destination similarities could have become too obvious, and the movie may have felt like a mere retread of that franchise’s formula.
Introducing Bill to the story means The Monkey has a character whose attempts to deal with the curse are rooted in the future and another who is perpetually trapped in the past.
In contrast, introducing Bill to the story means The Monkey has a character whose attempts to deal with the curse are rooted in the future and another who is perpetually trapped in the past. Hal’s son Petey comes to represent a third viewpoint, unaffected by the trauma of Lois’s death, when he forces Hal to confront his demons and simply exis the present. Thus, The Monkey’s story only works thanks to this major Stephen King story change.
