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.

"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...