Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Monkey.

Longlegs director Osgood Perkins and NEON took one of Stephen King's classic short stories and unleashed another horror icon with 2025's The Monkey proves it is a terrifying and almost unbeatable force.

Like in Stephen King's story, the killer toy in comedic deaths it creates in The Monkey. While the toy is just as much of a terrifying threat in Perkins's film as in King's story, the evil monkey is depicted differently in both versions of the story.

The Toy Monkey's Origin In The Monkey Explained

The Monkey Is A Source Of Great Mystery In The Film

The Monkey opens with Hal and Bill's father, Capt. Petey Shelburn, trying to give away the toy monkey at a nearby antique store. When talking to the shopkeeper, Petey explains that he doesn't know exactly what the monkey is. The film also doesn't explain precisely where Petey found the monkey or who gave it to him. It's simply depicted as one of many trinkets that Petey has picked up on his travels to bring home to his family, whom he abandons not long after leaving the monkey with them.

The titular toy was frightening enough with its angry eyes, giant teeth, and ability to kill, but the monkey is even scarier when it is portrayed as some unknown cosmic horror with the sole desire to unleash death.

By the end of the film, after so many years, Hal and Bill know just as much about the monkey as everyone else, leaving the evil toy a great enigma. It is wise that Osgood Perkins left the cursed toy's exact origins a mystery in The Monkey. The titular toy was frightening enough with its angry eyes, giant teeth, and ability to kill, but the monkey is even scarier when it is portrayed as some unknown cosmic horror with the sole desire to unleash death.

The Monkey's Powers & Abilities In The Movie

The Monkey Wields The Unstoppable And Chaotic Power Of Death

Whenever a character in The Monkey turns the toy's key, it bears its teeth and raises its arm up, prepared to hit its drum. However, the monkey has a mind of its own, so it only hits the drum when it decides to kill someone. This could happen at any random moment, creating plenty of suspense throughout The Monkey. But once the wicked toy finally hits the drum, its power affects reality in a way that causes a person to die, similar to Death in the Final Destination franchise. For instance, a death created by the monkey can be as simple as giving someone a brain aneurysm or as elaborate as forcing an AC unit off a roof and electrocuting someone in a nearby swimming pool. However, the monkey doesn't kill the person who turned its key.

No matter how many times Hal and Bill try to get rid of it, the monkey teleports back to them when they least expect it, which can be hours or years later. Even after Hal and his father Petey chop or burn it up, it always returns to them, completely intact. The film also established that the monkey "doesn't take requests" when it comes to killing, meaning it kills whoever it wants, whenever it wants. As a result, when Bill tries to make the monkey hit its drum, it refuses to obey him. Seemingly enraged, the monkey even hits its drum so many times that it unleashes an earthquake that causes several people in their proximity to die all at once.

How The Monkey's Killer Toy Compares To Stephen King's Book

The Monkey Has A Different Instrument And Fate In Both Stories

One major difference between the monkey in Osgood Perkins's film and Stephen King's short story is the instrument that it uses. In King's version of The Monkey, the sinister toy bangs a pair of cymbals when it decides to kill someone. As for Perkins's movie, the monkey plays a drum and plays a whimsical tune the moment it kills a person. This difference is due to Disney owning the rights of the cymbal-banging monkey who appeared in Toy Story 3.

The way Hal defeats the toy monkey also differs between the film and the source material. In King's short story, Hal and his son, Petey, throw the monkey into a lake and weigh it down with rocks. While the monkey doesn't teleport back to them, a lot of fish in the lake turn up dead, indicating it is still functional. Meanwhile, Perkins's film shows Hal and Petey taking the monkey with them after Bill's death, accepting that it is part of their lives and that they should carry it with them to prevent anyone from using it again.

Why The Monkey Toy Kills People

The Monkey's Motives Are Vague, But It Likes To Give A Show

It isn't clear why the cursed toy likes to kill people in The Monkey, but it is more than just a destructive force of nature. In one of The Monkey's trailers, Bill states that the monkey chose him and Hal to witness its power over life and death. This statement explains why it keeps appearing to Bill and Hal and why it doesn't kill whoever turned its key. Whether or not Hal is correct about how the monkey is "basically the Devil," the living toy is clearly a sadist.

It seems that the monkey wants to see how the deaths it causes affect the people around them, particularly Bill and Hal. Many of the people that the monkey kills die right in front of Hal and Bill, allowing it to watch how all this death twists them and makes them suffer. The fact that the monkey gave its key to Bill so it could activate it himself implies that it also likes watching how its power corrupts human beings and turns them into killers as well.

Is The Monkey Still Cursed After The Ending?

The Monkey Remains A Part Of Hal's Life In The End Of The Film

After the monkey kills Bill and wipes out most of the town, Hal and his son, Petey, take the toy with them. They know the danger that the monkey still poses a threat to humanity, having seen the chaos that it released. However, the final scene of The Monkey's ending shows Hal seeing a ghostly figure riding a pale horse, implied to be Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, before driving off with the evil toy.

Hal's encounter with Death could be interpreted as the spirit of the monkey leaving its earthly vessel after killing so many people at the same time. However, The Monkey implies that the toy is still spreading death, as shown when a bus full of cheerleaders gets killed by a ing truck seconds later.

In the end, The Monkey proves that the characters can't get rid of the killer toy. As an agent of death, the monkey is an unknowable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable force as constant in Hal's life as death is in everyone else's lives. Only after accepting this fact that Hal was able to move on and not live in fear of the monkey, making the film's ending much more fitting than how Stephen King's story ends.