The Monkey director explains why it was so important to him to give Stephen King's "chilling" short story a "playful horror" twist: "I think [that] seemed correct for a movie about a toy"

Director Osgood Perkins says it was important for his adaptation of Stephen King's short story The Monkey to be more on the comedic side - rather than a straight horror.

"I took a playful horror shine to it right away. That was important to me from the get-go with this project, that it wasn't going to be dreadfully sombre. It was going to be more comedic, and cosy, which I think seemed correct for a movie about a toy. I wanted to steer away from the more serious movies about possessed toys, which don't ring true for me," Perkins says in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features Daredevil: Born Again on the cover and hits newsstands on January 29.

The short story was first published in a magazine in 1980, and was nominated for a British Fantasy Award in 1982. The film adaptation follows two brothers named Bill and Hal (both played by Theo James) who find a creepy cymbal-banging monkey toy belonging to their father in the attic, which starts a chain reaction of horrible Final Destination-style deaths. The brothers throw the monkey in the trash and go their separate ways, but are forced to reconcile years later when a new series of inexplicable deaths begins to occur. The brothers set out on a mission to destroy the monkey once and for all. The trailer will make you laugh, despite all the gore.

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"When you see the monkey or feel the monkey it's like, 'Oh no, not that horrible thing!' So I have that. That's pre-existing. "What I don't need to do is then goose that, because that's already laid in," he continues. "Instead I can add a layer of warm, redemptive, father-son road trip comedy, which just gives the thing a more robust life and becomes more interesting to me, more textured. I hope everybody goes into it with dread and carries their dread around with them, but is also happy to have a laugh."

The cast includes Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O'Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. James Wan is producing the pic under his Atomic Monster banner.

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The Monkey releases on February 21. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which will be available from Wednesday, January 29. Check out the Daredevil: Born Again cover to look for on newsstands below...