Summary:
A 2019 reboot of the 1988 slasher classic revolving around a killer doll named Chucky.
My Thoughts:
Well, I’ve done it. I’ve officially seen every “Child’s Play”/ Chucky film ever made. What an accomplishment, right? Well, obviously, I wouldn’t have put myself through ten plus hours of Chucky if I weren’t at least a little bit of a fan; I am. Much like Freddy Krueger from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, Chucky’s brand of horror isn’t wholly horrifying, in fact, most of the time the horror elements are played for laughs.
There were seven films in the original run, and all of them had the involvement of Don Mancini (director of “Seed of Chucky”), the creator, and Brad Douriff (“Curse of Chucky”), who played the original voice of Chucky. I honestly think the series starts to get better after the third entry- the first three entries were sort of rushed out and sloppy, and the forth film in the series (“Bride of Chucky”) really starts to develop the series’ voice into one that is more comedic. Then the sixth entry in the series (“Curse of Chucky”), makes another shift in tone and tries to be more horrific again, and it actually accomplishes it pretty well. Since the latest entry in the Chucky franchise (“Cult of Chucky”) came out in 2017, I wondered what this new Chucky movie could add to the franchise- if it added anything at all.
To my delight, I found this film does have something it wants to say, and while I don’t think I enjoy Mark Hamill’s (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) version of Chucky as much as Brad Douriff’s, I did think this film had plenty of things that would draw in fans of the original series.
“If I can’t be your best buddy, then nobody can.”
Single mom Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza, “Ingrid Goes West”) is struggling to raise her young boy Andy (Gabriel Bateman, “Lights Out”). Andy has a hard time making friends in the new neighborhood, so Karen gets him a Buddi doll (voiced by Mark Hamill), which she is unaware, has been tampered with. As Andy starts chatting with his Buddi doll, named Chucky, he realizes that there is something unusual about his particular model, and soon he tries to get his doll to play tricks on Shane (David Lewis, “Superman Returns”), Karen’s new boyfriend. Detective Mike Norris (Brian Tyree Henry, “Get Out”) takes a shinning to Andy after seeing him in the hall, and promises to keep an eye on him if anything weird happens.
So, really, I think the thing that I liked most about this film was that it was able to update the franchise without really loosing much of what made the original series a ton of fun to begin with. In this film, Chucky isn’t possessed by the soul of a serial killer, and instead is just an AI program gone awry. I was worried that AI Chucky wouldn’t be as funny as Charles Lee Ray Chucky, and for the most part I was right, but Mark Hamill finds ways to make moments of the film still incredibly humorous. Where the first films were about Chucky trying to trick Andy into letting him hide his soul inside his body, this film is more about AI misunderstanding human commands and desires, and then developing emotional connection, and fighting back when he feels wronged. The more humorous moments come when Chucky misunderstands what Andy wants- like when he sees Andy and his friends laughing at “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and attempts to stab one of them as a joke.
The slasher scenes are actually pretty great. You can’t have a Chucky movie without some absolutely bonkers death scenes, and this film certainly delivers. Some of the stuff that happens in the movie is actually pretty horrific and grotesque, but the tongue-in-cheek way its approached paired with the vibrantly colored blood makes it more humorous than anything else. The ending sequence goes gloriously off the rails, and I found myself just giddy with laughter.
Verdict:
I’m a fan of the “Child’s Play” series, but saying that, I know that the series isn’t remarkably compelling or well done; they’re just cheesy horror flicks with a few laughs. While this wasn’t my favorite Chucky film (I think “Seed of Chucky” is still the funniest), I do think that fans of the franchise will find plenty of things to connect with in this movie.
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