This post contains spoilers for "The Monkey."

Despite Stephen King's reputation for having bad endings, there are some conclusions in his beloved works that have gone down in history, like the famous ending of "Carrie," or the moving final moments of "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," which are largely recreated in their respective movie adaptations. But some film adaptations of King's work have boldly diverged from the source material.

The renowned filmmaker Stanley Kubrick famously decided to scrap the ending of "The Shining," forcing Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) to face a trial by ice instead of fire, freezing to death in a hedge maze rather than blowing up the hotel as King originally wrote. Now, years later, "Longlegs" director Osgood Perkins has also dared to wander off the King's road with his adaptation of the 1980 short story "The Monkey." What's surprising is that somehow, the filmmaker has conjured...