I am a fan of Stephen King. I love his style and his unique storytelling. The fact his career has lasted this long and his success has never lagged is incredible. With Never Flinch out on sale, it is a matter of time before the main character of Holly Gibney gets her own TV series or films based on the books the character is in.

There have been countless adaptations of his work. It is no secret he is loose with the rights to his work, so you can find many of his stories adapted for TV and film.
The Monkey is a film that was released earlier this year and is based on his 1980 short story of a similar name.

The story follows a statue of the said monkey, which in the short story claps symbols. This was changed to a drum for the film adaptation. It follows Hal, a man who has been haunted by the monkey since finding it as a kid. He found it and noticed a pattern of death and destruction after the monkey claps the symbols. He throws it down a well only for it to reappear and for his son to find it. He takes it and drops it into a deep lake but hears the clapping, and his boat falls apart. He manages to swim to shore, but the fish in the lake die.

The film takes the story and adds a lot into it. Hal gets an identical twin brother, and a lot more characters are added. Osgood Perkins wrote and directed the adaptation, and he brings his unique style and sense of dark humour to it. Osgood expands, and the story to stretch it out.

The film expands on the themes of guilt and grief from the original story. It adds a revenge plot with the brothers and sibling bullying. It stays with the brothers for the first half of the first act before transitioning to them as older men. The story gets messy as a lot of deaths start happening; most are Final Destination-level deaths. Hal’s son, Petey, is involved, but the relationship is different from the story.

I won’t spoil the ending this time, but it is crazy. Now, was this a good adaptation? Kinda. It took the skeleton of the short story and moulded a horror film worthy of having Stephen King’s name attached to it. In terms of adaptation, it changed a lot of the story, but given the details and nature of the story, you have to expect creativity to be done to make it cinema-worthy. I would tell people to watch this film and to check out the story, which can be found in Stephen King’s story collection Skeleton Crew.