Editing The Monkey (section)

== Plot ==
In 1999, pilot Petey Shelburn unsuccessfully attempts to return and then destroy a drum-playing toy monkey at an antiques shop, then disappears, leaving his wife Lois to raise their identical twin sons: meek Hal and cruel Bill. The boys discover the monkey in a closet filled with their father's things and turn its key. Later, it drums while the boys are at dinner, causing the accidental decapitation of their babysitter, Annie.

Bill's bullying of Hal increases, causing Hal to turn the monkey's key again, hoping it will kill Bill. Instead, Lois suffers an aneurysm and dies suddenly in front of Bill. Guilt-ridden, Hal destroys the monkey with a cleaver before he and his brother move to Maine with their aunt Ida and uncle Chip. The monkey reappears at their new house, completely undamaged. Bill also realizes the monkey's power and, against Hal's protests, tests it: Chip is subsequently fatally trampled on a hunting trip. The boys, realizing the monkey cannot be destroyed, lock it in its box and throw it down a nearby well, hoping it will remain hidden.

Twenty-five years later, Hal is estranged from both his brother and his son, also named Petey, whom he only sees once per year out of fear of passing his own bad luck onto his son. Hal learns that his ex-wife and her new husband, parenting author Ted Hammerman, plan to fully adopt Petey, cutting Hal out of his son's life. Hal and Petey stay at a motel, where Hal lies about being an only child and Petey remains frustrated at his father's apparent lack of care.

Aunt Ida is killed at her house when the monkey, having escaped the well, is triggered once again. Ricky, the son of a local police officer, buys the monkey at the subsequent estate sale, growing attached to it as it reminds him of his absent father. Bill calls Hal out of the blue and demands he drive to Ida's to settle her estate and find the monkey, which Hal realizes has been activated already after a woman is electrocuted in their motel pool. The pair travel to Ida's house, where Petey learns about Bill's existence and Hal learns that numerous people in town have died in apparent strange accidents in the past week following Ida's death. The real estate agent is also killed in front of Hal when a shotgun falls out of a closet and fires itself.

Hal learns that Bill himself now owns the monkey, having hired Ricky to collect it from him. Bill knew that their mother's death was because Hal used the monkey and now seeks revenge, spending years waiting for it to return. Bill also had deduced that whoever turns the key is immune to the monkey's power, but that he cannot directly choose who the monkey will kill - the townspeople's deaths were caused by him repeatedly trying to cause Hal's death, to no avail. Bill demands that Hal bring Petey to him to he can turn the key instead, but Hal refuses. Ricky, disguised in his father's police uniform and wielding a gun, kidnaps both Hal and Petey and forces Petey to enter Bill's booby-trapped house to steal the monkey back.

Petey avoids Bill's traps and meets his uncle for the first time, who tricks him into turning the key - Ricky is subsequently killed by a swarm of wasps. Hal follows his son inside. Bill angrily tries to force the monkey to drum without turning the key, but the monkey retaliates by drumming repeatedly, causing widespread death and destruction in the town but still leaving Hal alive. Hal and Bill finally reconcile over their shared loss of their mother and apologize to each other now that this whole murdering mess has finally been settled, but not before the monkey finally kills Bill with one of his own booby-traps.

Hal and Petey drive through the town, accepting their fate as the owners of the monkey to prevent the key from being turned again. At an intersection, a pale black-eyed man on a horse, implied to be Death, passes by and acknowledges the two. Hal decides to bond with his son properly by taking him dancing, which Lois also loved; Petey accepts.