In theaters right now is the latest in a long line of Stephen King adaptations, The Monkey. King has had so many of his books put into movie or television form that it’s honestly a surprise that it took any filmmaker this long to make this one. The short story source material was written in 1980, and four and a half decades later, Osgood Perkins, James Wan, and others teamed up to finally bring it to the big screen.
Perhaps it’s advantageous that they waited this long because they were able to put in some excruciating death scenes that might not have been possible with the technology or effects of the 1980s, 90s, or 2000s. In fact, the outrageous death sequences were the topic of conversation between IGN, Perkins, King, and Wan.
Stephen King Shares Thoughts on The Monkey Adaptation
The central idea of The Monkey is that everyone dies. It’s in the tagline for the movie, and it’s a theme prevalent in both the film and the short story. Such is life, that everyone dies at some point. The film adaptation certainly plays with that idea in ways the short story didn’t and arguably couldn’t. As descriptive as a book can be, a movie can show audiences flat-out what something looks like. There’s no speculation as to how gruesome a certain character’s death was in the movie. We all saw it.
Perhaps not in such a gory way, this movie does mirror life. At least, that’s what author Stephen King said in the IGN interview. “The entire movie mirrors life in the sense that you don’t know what’s going to happen to anybody,” the horror writer said. “You can get up on an ordinary day and things just go to hell.” That’s essentially what happened to Hal Shelburn in both King’s story and Osgood Perkins’ adaptation.
Stephen King Embraces Changes
There are some distinct changes from the source material. Without spoiling either one, although the book is quite old at this point, much of the plot differs between the two, but King liked what Perkins did with all his changes. He said it goes “balls to the wall” and that he loved how gory some of the deaths were. King did say there might not be much point in analyzing the story too deeply, especially with the film. It’s a horror-comedy, so it’s not meant to be so deep.
However, he, Wan, Perkins, and IGN interviewer Tom Jorgenson did get to analyzing the film. The It author said, “All of this analysis is so much icing on the cake. In a way, what I do is very instinctual, and I think that what Oz did was instinctual, too.” King said it was almost like those old Roadrunner cartoons in the movie’s absurdist nature mixed with the horror and shock value of the Final Destination franchise.
If you’re interested, you can check out our review of the film as well. Stephen King likes it, and so did I. It’s a shallow exploration of death, trauma, and familial bonds, but it’s more than most movies with the disgusting kills The Monkey has would offer. It’s also a movie out in February, a month in which the bar is pretty low as it is.
