Spoilers for the 2025 film The Monkey. No one is identified as controlling the toy. The film leaves the monkey’s origin and supernatural rules unexplained; director Osgood Perkins describes it as a passive totem associated with death, not a killer that attacks or takes orders. The ending’s clearest meaning is thematic: death cannot be controlled or chosen, even when people desperately try.
Who—or what—is controlling the monkey?
The film does not reveal a controller, creator, or precise supernatural mechanism. Perkins said, “The supernatural power of The Monkey is never spelled out in the movie. It just is.” He deliberately leaves the mythology open rather than naming a demon, spirit, or person behind the deaths. Vanity Fair’s interview with Perkins discusses that choice.
Perkins also rejects the idea that the toy behaves like a conventional slasher villain. It does not physically stab or attack people with its drumsticks. He describes it instead as “an entity like a totem, a deity, an icon, or an idol”—something inert that observes life and death. That does not establish a literal deity or explain how the deaths happen; it underscores how little agency the film assigns to the object itself. Creative Screenwriting’s February 20, 2025 interview includes Perkins’s description.
What happens at the end?
In the ending account published by Plot Explained, Hal survives, while Bill dies after the brothers briefly reconcile. That is a secondary summary of the film’s events, not an explanation of the monkey’s origin or motive. The film does not confirm that the toy deliberately spares Hal, targets Bill for a reason, or follows a knowable set of supernatural rules. Plot Explained’s ending guide reports the brothers’ reconciliation and their fates.
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That distinction matters: an outcome is not proof of intention. The ending leaves viewers with the deaths and the brothers’ fractured relationship, but it does not provide a final revelation that turns the monkey into a controllable agent.
What does the ending mean?
Death is not something people can direct
Perkins frames the story around mortality rather than a puzzle with a hidden supernatural answer. He described the film’s thesis as the idea that “death is happening, and that’s just life,” adding that people cannot ask life to kill them in a chosen way. On this reading, the monkey embodies the human urge to impose order on death—and the failure of that urge. The Koalition’s February 21, 2025 interview covers Perkins’s thematic framing.
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Family trauma is a possible reading, not a revealed rule
The twins’ history can also invite an interpretation about family dysfunction or inherited trauma. Actor Theo James has floated that possibility, but the movie does not declare it to be the monkey’s supernatural mechanism. It is a way to read the brothers’ story, not confirmation that family pain controls the toy. James and Perkins discuss the interpretation in The Koalition interview.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How the film relates to Stephen King’s story
The 2025 film adapts Stephen King’s short story “The Monkey.” King’s official film page says the twins Hal and Bill discover their father’s vintage toy, witness deaths, discard it, and later confront the deaths’ return. It lists Perkins as writer-director, James Wan as producer, and February 21, 2025, as the film’s release date. Stephen King’s official film page provides those production and premise details.
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Plot Explained characterizes the movie as a substantial expansion that keeps the twin brothers and the monkey but changes much of the narrative. The collection Skeleton Crew contains King’s source story, so it offers a way to compare adaptation choices—not an answer key for the movie’s deliberately unstated mythology. Plot Explained’s guide identifies the collection and discusses the adaptation.
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