Summary:
After her mother’s unusual death, a woman begins to suspect that the Good Guy doll that was sent to her by mistake might be alive and murderous.
My Thoughts:
This is a strange change of pace for the Chucky series, but it is in no way a bad change. More than anything, “Curse of Chucky” feels like a soft reboot; it has all of the elements of the original film and really returns to it’s slasher roots, but it also incorporates scraps of the sequels. As a pseudo-fan of the series, I found that I really enjoyed this approach to Chucky. While many of the sequels thus far have focused more on the comedic aspect of Chucky’s character, this film begs us to take Chucky seriously again, and it works pretty well. Chucky is easily at his most frightening in this movie, far more so than even the original “Child’s Play”.
“Twenty-five years… must be the slowest murder in history!”
Shortly after Nica’s (Fiona Dourif, “The Master”) mother Sarah (Chantal Quesnelle) dies a mysterious death, Nica’s older, b*tchy sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti, “Insidious Chapter 2”), Barb’s husband Ian (Brennan Elliott, “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb”), their daughter Alice (Summer Howell, “Cult of Chucky”), and their live-in nanny Jill (Maitland McConnell) all come to visit Nica thinking she’ll need their help preparing for the funeral. Nica gives Alice a Good Guys doll that was mistakenly delivered to their house, and soon after creepy and unexplainable things start to happen.
I mentioned above that this film sort of feels like a soft reboot of the franchise, and really, that’s sort of what surprised me the most about this particular entry. Don Mancini, whom has written the Child’s Play series since the beginning, finally got his chance to direct with “Seed of Chucky”, which I found to be one of the better, crasser, funnier entries in the series. Mancini gets Chucky’s character, as well he should, as he’s the one who created him, but more than that, Mancini actually seems to care about the series, wants to see it succeed, and has a plan on where he wants the story to go. That earnestness bleeds through many of the moments in this movie.
This entry is all over the place chronologically; there are moments that happen pre-“Child’s Play”, other moments that fall in between “Child’s Play 3” and “Bride of Chucky”, and then a flash forward at the end of the film happens after “Seed of Chucky”, finally pushing the series towards the conclusion (or latest entry) “Cult of Chucky.” Honestly, that’s kind of the film’s greatest strength and weakness. For fans or even casual viewers of the series, this kind of fan service are great- it helps us to make all of the connections through the Chucky universe that might not have been obvious before. For people whom haven’t seen the other entries in the series, I expect these scenes will feel like long, pointless, boring exposition dumps that really have no effect on the overall story. I suppose this series is kind of like the Marvel Universe at this point; you don’t need to see every entry in the MCU in order to catch most of what’s going on, but it certainly helps.
I mentioned that Chucky is at his scariest in this film, and I’ll take that a step further: he’s also at the pique of his brutality, and some of the things he does in this film are beyond cruel. They really lean into the evil behind Charles Lee Ray, and focus more on the serial killing aspect in a gruesome manor. If you remember in the last entry, “Seed of Chucky”, killing people became sort of a joke. “It’s like my hobby,” Chucky says. They even go to the point of having Chucky’s bride Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly, “Tideland”) swear off killing as if she was an alcoholic trying to swear off drinking. They play up those moments for laughs, and there’s none of that in this film. The gore effects are more realistic (to the point where I actually let slip an exclamation during one scene), the atmosphere is tenser, and the overall story just wants us to take it a bit more seriously, and, it works. Way to go Don Mancini! You should keep making these movies, because I’m enjoying them more and more.
There are some issues with special effects, particularly one scene where Chucky walks down the stairs and it’s totally apparent he’s CGI. All of the other films use practical effects for 90% of the time Chucky is on screen, and the other 10% of the time they use camera tricks to make people look like Chucky. This film, being the first straight to DVD feature in the series, obviously had a lower budget to work with, and it shows. There are quite a few scenes where you can clearly tell that the person in the frame is a person, not a doll. It never really took me out of the movie too much, but it is noticeable.
Some of the acting is, admittedly, pretty bad, but mostly from the side characters. I’m delighted to say that Fiona Dourif, who is Brad Dourif’s daughter, did a fine job as Nica. As much as I’m usually against nepotism, I actually think it’s kind of cool that they kind of kept this series in the Dourif family for so long that it ended up staring a second generation. (SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW) It was sort of cool to see Tiffany/Jennifer Tilly pop back up at the end of this film, though, if I’m being honest, I wish Tiffany were in it more; she’s was a great part of the last two entries, and I’m hoping she has a bigger part in “Cult of Chucky.” I did find it a little weird that in the post-credits scene Alex Vincent (“Child’s Play”) shows up to reprise his role as Andy Barclay. Not that the cameo wasn’t appreciated, but it just felt a little shoehorned in, especially since when we end this film Chucky arrives at Alice’s home, and as the credits roll, he begins to play “Hide the Soul”, meaning, if all went well, he should be in Alice’s body now.
Whatever, this series has always had logic problems; I’m not going to pretend like it doesn’t.
Verdict:
The “Child’s Play” series overall contains a lot of middling entries, but the more I’ve watched them, the more I’ve come to appreciate them for what they are: silly, gory, weird slasher films. None of them even come close to being great films, but surprisingly the later entries show a little more finesse than the earlier ones. If you like Chucky, then this one entry in the series is one you wont want to miss. If you don’t like Chucky, well, it’s really up to you if you want to see this or not. It’s certainly not a terrible film, but it’s not great either.
Review Written By: