Summary:
Chucky once again returns to trouble Andy Barclay, who is now a teenager living at military school.
My Thoughts:
The first “Child’s Play” film was pretty funny; “Child’s Play 2” was pretty stupid, but it still had some pretty good laughs; right now, “Child’s Play 3” is a strong contender for the stupidest movie I’ve watched this year. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still laughed a fair amount in this film, which is why I still plan to watch some of the sequels, plus, by most accounts this is the worst of the “Child’s Play” series. Just how bad is it? Well, from all aspects- acting, directing, writing, the overall story- all of those aspects are terrible. What does that leave? Absolutely nothing. There’s really nothing redeeming about this movie… unless you’ve got a twisted sense of humor, which, thankfully, I do.
“You just can’t keep a Good Guy down.”
Eight years after Andy Barclay and Kyle killed Chucky in the Good Guys factory by pouring acid on him and blowing up his head, Good Guy executive Sullivan (Peter Haskell, “Child’s Play 2”) decides that it’s time to put the Good Guy toy line back on the shelves, and the factory is reopened. As the crew cleans up the long-abandoned factory, some of Charles Lee Ray’s blood spills into the plastic and his soul passes once again into a Good Guy doll. Chucky murders Sullivan and immediately goes about trying to locate Andy Barclay (Justin Whalin, “Serial Mom”), whom now attends military school. After arriving at the school, Chucky decides that instead of putting his soul into Andy, he’ll instead use Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers). Andy soon realizes what Chucky is up to, and he tries to convince his schoolmates De Silva (Perrey Reeves, “Old School”), Whitehurst (Dean Jacobson, “Junior (1994)”), and his rival Shelton (Travis Fine, “Girl, Interrupted”). Will Chucky put his soul in Tyler’s body, or will he wind up horribly mutilated in some tragic and slightly funny accident? Take a guess…
I think I mentioned in my review for “Child’s Play 2” that that film really had no reason to be made other than to make a quick buck; that goes triple for this film. I do admit that at least Chucky being brought back to life on accident is a little more compelling than some random guy refurbishing Chucky for no reason, but that’s beside the point. The writers of this film really have no reason for Chucky to come back other than he needs to be back to make a sequel; I’m sure the way they bring him back in the following entries will be just as shoehorned and ridiculous as his first two resurrections.
Though this film was made only one year after “Child’s Play 2” it takes place eight years later, so obviously they couldn’t use Alex Vincent (“Curse of Chucky”), and they instead cast Justin Whalin. None of the acting is what I would call ‘good’ in this film, but he is certainly one of the more passable actors in the movie. By far the worst actors are some of Andy’s classmates; they deliver poorly written dialogue with such earnestness that it’s hard not to laugh every time a horrible line is written, but after a while, it just becomes draining, and I really just wanted it to end.
The actual story is pretty ridiculous, and when you look at it under a microscope it feels even more silly. Andy winds up at a military school and Chucky decides to go there; okay, so far so good. Then once Chucky gets to the military school he decides to go after some different kid… Hold up, why doesn’t he go to a different place and just attack some other kid that doesn’t have military training? Take it a step further, why would Chucky willfully go towards the only kid that knows he’s a psychopath and then try to infect a different kid? Alright, it’s “Child’s Play 3” not “Citizen Kane”, I guess I can’t expect everything to make sense… let’s keep going… actually let’s just get to the climax, because a bunch of pointless stuff takes up like forty minutes of this film. I’m going to skip the stuff that doesn’t matter- like Chucky killing a garbage man for no reason, or frightening a Colonel (Dakin Matthews, “True Grit (2010)”) into having a heart attack, or killing a barber (Andrew Robinson, “Hellraiser”)- why does he do any of that? To push the body count a little higher, and that’s about it. Eventually, Chucky ambushes Andy and his military pals while they’re doing a training exercise, kills a few kids, and then chases Tyler to a carnival/ haunted house area. Tyler ends up unconscious and Andy, whom has proved to be a terrible shot through the film, decides to take aim at Chucky, who is literally two feet from Tyler’s head. Good thing Andy can hit a target when he’s farther away from it than he’s ever been and under life-threatening pressure, right?
(SPOILERS FOLLOW)
Honestly, the most disappointing part of this movie is the lack of gory stuff that happens with Chucky. The best parts of the first two movies were watching Chucky get mangled and torn apart into little bits and watching him still keep coming; the first film he was set on fire and hacked up before he was finally blown to bits; the second film he lost limbs, wheeled himself around on a cart, got acid poured on him… in this film a grim reaper in the haunted house area slices off half his face and then gets shot a couple times before finally falling into a fan and exploding, but all of that happens in the last eight minutes of the film. I’m sorry, but I’m a horror fan, and as a horror fan I want horror stuff to be going on throughout my horror movie. The last eight minutes and the language are the only things that made this film rated R; the rest of it easily could’ve passed as a PG-13 film.
Verdict:
I guess I can’t really expect too much going into “Child’s Play 3”, but I expected more than this. This is easily the worst film of the series (thus far), and it might be the worst movie I’ve reviewed this year (“Silent Hill: Revelation” is still the worst film this site has ever reviewed). Still, I’m not quite through with Chucky yet…
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