How The Monkey Pays Constant Tribute To Stephen King

BETWEEN FILMMAKER OSGOOD Perkins’s last two movies—last year’s sleeper serial killer hit Longlegs and the new Stephen King adaptation The Monkey—there’s absolutely no shortage of blood and gore. But one early scene in the latter film, in which twin brothers Hal and Bill (played by Christian Convery, a young version of the main characters played by Theo James) go to a Benihana with their babysitter, seems hard to top. As both sit, contently enjoying the hibachi theatrics as their chef chops and dices, the chef makes eyes with their babysitter, who returns the quiet flirtation. That charm doesn’t last long; the chef tosses something in the air and slices quickly. Within moments, the boys are looking on in horror as the decapitated head of the babysitter falls onto the still-hot grill. That babysitter’s name, we later learn, was Annie Wilkes—the same as the iconic villain in King’s Misery.

Perkins, who finally gained mainstream popularity in 2024 with Longlegs after years of making underrated films like The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, has been working like a madman of late. Longlegs, along another film, Keeper (which will release later in 2025), and The Monkey made up a trio of projects that Perkins embarked on all right around the same time. But that third film marked the writer/director’s chance to adapt the work of one of his heroes: King, whose novels and short stories have been fueling American nightmares for more than 50 years.

The film is based on a short story of King’s, originally published in Gallery magazine before landing in his 1985 book Skeleton Crew, following twin brothers who find a wind-up monkey as children, only to later discover that it’s directly responsible for wreaking a series of horrific deaths. 25 years later, the monkey returns, forcing the estranged siblings to face the evil toy yet again.

King’s work has long impacted Perkins—the filmmaker remembers holding his father’s (actor Anthony Perkins, of Psycho fame) copy of Pet Sematary, an old thumbed copy, realizing that things could be “scary, but in an enjoyable way.” He first encountered an adaptation of King’s work in his youth, when a babysitter was watching Salem’s Lot on television. “That was really bad for me to watch at such a young age,” he says.

In making The Monkey, Perkins finally had the chance to pay his respects to the work of someone who greatly influenced him and so many others. So, when he got the rights to adapt “The Monkey,” he felt the pressure of needing to get it right.

“It was really important to me to honor his contribution… as an American author who’s given so much to the culture and who’s informed so much of how we think about fear, the uncanny, death, the afterlife, and magic,” he says. “He’s given so much, and I wanted to give back to him.”

Part of how he wanted to give back was calling the film Stephen King’s The Monkey (think the way Francis Ford Coppola’s film is called Bram Stoker’s Dracula), but due to legal issues, that title wasn’t allowed to move forward. So we are left, simply, with The Monkey.

Perkins wanted to honor King with themes and surprise easter eggs that he knew fans of would recognize and enjoy—but not go overboard so to make things distracting. But first came adapting the short story, which was first published in 1980. While major pieces of the story—including the monkey itself, the importance of a well, and the complex relationship between Hal and Bill— remain intact, Perkins goes in his own direction for much of the rest of things, starting with setting the film in the ‘90s, and completely coming up with his own ending.

But there are things he does to reference both horror itself (the appearance of a perfectly-cast Elijah Wood, who previously appeared in genre favorites The Faculty and Maniac) and King’s work. “Calling someone ‘son of a whore,’ and it’s all one word, is a very Stephen King word,” he says. “’Son of a whore’ is said by a few of the characters at various times. It’s nasty, but also funny. One of the first things a character says to the monkey is ‘son of a whore.'”

Despite coming up with much of The Monkey’s story from scratch, Perkins wanted to make sure he stayed true to the themes that so often define King’s work. “It wasn’t about holding the book open with one hand and typing with the other hand,” he says. “It was more about trying to conjure the spirit.”

Much of The Monkey is about family ties—Bill and Hal’s complicated relationship, the abandonment they feel from their MIA father, the love they share for their mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), and, eventually, adult Bill’s complicated relationship with his own son, Petey (Colin O’Brien), which comes from a place of protection. Despite all the gore, the family dynamics gave Perkins a lot to work with to convey the emotional arc of the film, exploring themes that permeate King’s own work amongst their horrors.

“There’s a weird anxiety and fragility around parenthood, the relationship between parents and kids and how that dynamic works, and how we yearn to protect our kids from life,” he says. “But we also acknowledge that that’s a fool’s errand. You can’t really do that. You also acknowledge the fact that you as the parent will probably be the one that does the most damage.”

While Perkins manages to mix the disgusting beats and emotional beats together in a way that makes for a satisfying, darkly comedic tone, he also knew he wanted to pay a bit of fan service for the die-hard King fans— and for himself, as well. King’s work is often self-referential, with many of his novels and stories set in his home of Maine—frequently taking place in the fictional towns of Derry and Castle Rock. Characters like It’s Pennywise also show up in other novels. As a nod to that, in an early scene in The Monkey, a babysitter is named ‘Annie Wilkes,’ a reference to both King’s novel Misery and the character that won Kathy Bates an Oscar in its 1990 film adaptation (Lizzy Caplan later played the role in Hulu’s Castle Rock). Later, a sex-ed teacher named ‘Mrs. Torrance’ appears—a reference to the family at the center of The Shining.

Perkins also didn’t want to turn the film into an “easter egg hunt.” To avoid this, he front-loaded the references in to the film, as a way to get them out of the way and not drag anything down. “A lot of people have been like, ‘At the end of the movie they’re driving through The Mist.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, totally intentional’… but it wasn’t really intentional,” he says with a laugh.

There was, however, one easter egg he ended up cutting—a piece of graffiti in a late movie setting that made direct reference to The Shawshank Redemption, the beloved film based on a King short story. “ Some of it was getting a little too cute,” he says.

Perkins holds so much affection for King’s work, but one in particular will always hold a place in his heart. “I’ve always been pretty partial to Creepshow. I was a comic book kid, and so having that be both a movie and such a beautifully done comic, Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations are so awesome,” he says. “As a piece of endearing, charming horror, I think that’s about as good as it gets.”

With The Monkey, Perkins has created his own disgusting, but charming horror film to place in the Stephen King canon. Case in point? That Benihana decapitation, which just adds another bloody bookmark