The Monkey’s Toy Origins & Symbolism Get Intriguing Explanation From Stephen King Movie Director

Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for The Monkey!

While the film leaves a lot up to the imagination, Oz Perkins has a pretty specific idea of the toy’s origins in The Monkey. Written and directed by the Longlegs filmmaker, the 2025 movie adapts Stephen King’s short story of the same name, following a man who grapples with the demons of his past connected to a toy monkey that seemingly kills random people in horrific ways. Led by Theo James, The Monkey has garnered largely positive reviews from critics for its darkly humorous tone and gruesome kills stemming from the titular toy, whose origins remain a mystery in it.

During a recent Ask Me Anything on Reddit, Perkins was asked about the origins of the toy, and whether the writer/director had one laid out, or if he consciously chose not to create one. Perkins revealed that he intended for the figure to be a representation of “god” in The Monkey, while also humorously remarking that part of the symbolism is that he doesn’t know “where god comes from or what the f—k it thinks it’s doing.” Check out what Perkins explained below:

What This Means For The Toy In The Monkey

Perkins Featured Many Allusions To This Symbolism Throughout The Film

While the film may have made some changes to its source material, the mysterious origins of the toy in The Monkey remain true to King’s short story in that they’re never answered. Some have argued that it’s simply a manifestation of Hal’s guilt, while others have argued that it’s a genuinely supernatural entity, both of which are ideas that King has explored in the past. James also recently weighed in on the former theory, feeling that while it’s an “interesting” idea, he didn’t feel it worked for the film as it made it a little too “existential” instead of fun.

Regardless of how the explanation impacts one’s viewing of the film, there are certainly plenty of clues alluding to Perkins’ viewing of The Monkey‘s toy as being a form of god. Throughout the film, particularly in the flashback scenes of Hal and Bill encountering multiple deaths, there are references made to the biblical idea that everything happens for a reason and everything falls into the mysterious plan of God. Tatiana Maslany’s Lois, on the other hand, presents her sons with an interesting alternate idea that everything and nothing is an accident, from which the comedic outlook on the film comes.

One of the biggest ties between Perkins’ symbolism and the film is in The Monkey‘s ending, in which Bill frantically tries to force the toy to kill his brother, resulting in a massive surge of deaths and destruction in the area rather than his twin, only to then be killed himself. As the brothers state frequently throughout the movie, it’s never fully clear how the toy works, and plays into the idea of God’s mysterious workings, while the appearance of a pale horseman alludes to the Horseman of Death, who serves as part of the biblical apocalypse.

Our Take On The Toy’s Origins In The Monkey

Getting Too Convoluted Would Ruin Its Mystique

Given how tricky backstory creations can be for something as unique as a wind-up toy monkey that kills people through Rube Goldberg-like machinations, Perkins arguably made the right call by keeping The Monkey‘s focus on its characters’ traumatic past with the toy rather than their efforts to learn more about it. It not only allowed the movie to relish in the gruesomely macabre deaths throughout it, but also kept its story feeling relatively grounded in Bill and Hal’s evolutions.

Source: Reddit

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The Monkey

6/10

Release Date

February 19, 2025

Runtime

98 Minutes

Director

Osgood Perkins

Writers

Osgood Perkins

Producers

John Rickard, Natalia Safran, Ali Jazayeri, Chris Ferguson, Fred Berger, Giuliana Bertuzzi, James Wan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, John Friedberg, Jason Cloth, David Gendron, Michael Clear, Jesse Savath, Peter Luo, Dave Caplan