I mentioned last year when doing my annual “Top 10 New To Me” post that I had absolutely fallen in love with the Chucky TV series – I hadn’t had access to it yet and when it showed up on Shudder, I was so happy to find myself getting more into a new show than I had for just about anything since I’d first discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer way back when. It’s playfulness, its audacity, its twisted little heart, the way I care about the characters – both the ‘good ones’ and the ‘bad ones’, and the ways that it commits to actual puppetry and practical effects and can actually elicit a squirm from me in its glorious moments of extremity, I really love it. I love its vast storylines with characters that reach back to the very first films, and I love how willing it is to make big changes – just about anyone (any lovable character, any innocent child, any polar bear) can die at just about any time, and yet, I don’t lose interest (always a danger if you feel like it isn’t worth investing emotionally in characters who might not make it). And so, especially since I just got to watch the third (and due to cancellation, sadly, final) season, I’ve really had a hankering to revisit the films that preceded it, and now that 6 out of 7 have landed on Shudder, I think this is the time.
It’s been a while since watching most and I remember enjoying them all, but to varying degrees and in different ways – an interesting feature of the series being its wild stylistic shifts while maintaining unbroken continuity of narrative and character. Each has left a certain impression in my mind and I’m curious to return to them as a whole and look at it all as one piece. For now, I’m just going to do the films – for all that I love the show, watching three seasons of TV is just too much for one post (as if watching 7 films weren’t already pushing it). I’d originally thought I might also check out the recently released Doc of Chucky (2024), but again 7 films is already a lot… So I look forward to watching it when this is all over, but I don’t have a plan to write it up.
I’m renting the first one today and then I expect I may only have until the end of the month before the rest leave Shudder, so here’s hoping I can burn through this all with great alacrity. Wish me luck. And obviously, I think it should go without saying when digging into so many films, but spoilers will abound…
Child’s Play (1988)
So, this movie made a big impression on me well before I ever watched it. I was ten when it was released, and really not into horror yet, and I remember that the trailer wormed its way into my brain and really freaked me out. I had this talking ALF doll at the time that unfairly took on the brunt of my fears – I ended up tying it up and taping it up and putting it in a box, which I taped up again, and hid it in the closet, the terrible idea having been planted in my impressionable young mind that a beloved toy could come to life and try to kill you. Freaked. Me. Out. Finally, years later, I did watch the movie and I remember being impressed with how well it all worked. Let’s see how it holds up now.
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Ok, it holds up great! Wow – what a tight, fun, scary, even emotionally grounded little movie. I love when a horror flick taps into a simple, unsettling idea – the monster who can kill you in your dreams and from whom you can never be safe, the urban legend waiting to appear behind you in the bathroom mirror, the unseen and unknowable killer who is never explained and never caught who is calling you from inside your own house, and in this case, as frightened me so as a child, the idea that a marker of childhood, such as a toy, could simply be evil – and target you, a child. To be fair, all dolls can be at least a bit uncanny – with a human form, but not human, dead, glassy eyes, always wide open, clearly inanimate, but what was that movement out of the corner of my eye? Probably nothing – just my mind playing tricks on myself… It is creepy, it feels wrong, all presumed safety and innocence merely a mask for cruel intent. It’s just an object, easy to overlook, easy to discount, but it’s watching and waiting and when you least expect, it can try to kill you and everyone you love.
In short, a mother gets her little boy the wrong doll for his birthday – it’s possessed by a voodoo practicing serial killer – and it murders everyone around him, ultimately trying to insert its soul into his young body before being permanently trapped in that of the doll. When weird and deadly things start happening, Andy, the boy, keeps telling everyone “It was Chucky,” but for some reason, no one believes him (go figure), making him appear at best disassociated, and at worst, possibly psychopathic – could he be the one who hit his babysitter in the head with a tiny hammer and made her fall out a window to her death? Could he have killed the boy’s psychiatrist and a former associate of a notorious serial killer? I mean, that would be pretty weird, but he was there…
Writer Don Mancini, director Tom Holland, and the whole crew take this simple, scary idea and just execute it so well on every level. I love how we don’t really see Chucky move or speak (as himself, not with the pre-programmed phrases of the doll) until halfway through the movie. Until then, there is so much effective tension in POV shots of the unseen murderer, mixed with still shots of the doll, perhaps in a new location and simple reaction shots of those being stalked – fearful, but also laughing at themselves as there is seemingly no real danger, until there is. It’s a bit like holding off on showing the shark in Jaws.
The fact that we don’t show him move until so late also opens up that little seed of doubt that none of this is happening, and that Andy, the little boy, is in fact crazy and maybe even murderous – a notion at least somewhat entertained by more than a few characters in the movie, and a particularly horrific thought for his mother, Karen. I don’t think it ever fully takes hold for her, but you can see her resisting the terrible idea. And for the audience, I don’t know – I mean everyone who bought a ticket back in 1988 knew they were going to the ‘killer doll’ movie, so no one could seriously doubt what was happening, but the fact that there is a kind of plausible deniability for so long did something for my viewing experience as well, if nothing else, on the level of the mother’s horror in having to even entertain the possibility that her son could be crazy and even possibly dangerous.
I really believe in her love for him – how hard she’s trying – a single mother doing her best, struggling to get by and give Andy every little thing she can to make his young life a happy one after the death of his father, even going so far as buying the yearned for ‘toy of the season’ for him from a peddler in an alleyway with a 70% discount on account of being possessed by the soul of a serial killer (like you do). Also, I believe in Andy’s sweetness and vulnerability – I think the director, Tom Holland, really hit the jackpot when he cast young, Alex Vincent as Andy, only 6 years old at the time. There’s a moment early on when he lays waste to the kitchen making his mom breakfast in bed and proceeds to wake her up at 6:30 in the morning – something anyone could be expected to be at least irritated by, but when she tries to roll over and go back to sleep and he counters, “but it’s such a beautiful day!” yanking open the curtains and letting the sun shine in, you can see her heart warm, and it is lovely. You go to a movie like this for the killer doll, but I think it wouldn’t work half as well without this sense of love, their relationship grounding this big, explosive, successfully scary movie.
And then, after 45 minutes, when he is finally fully shown to be animate on screen, crudely swearing a blue streak and trying to tear Karen’s face to shreds, it is startling and disturbing, and also funny – the incongruity of something so obscene and violent exploding so suddenly into the film (all voiced by undersung national treasure, Brad Dourif – I mean Exorcist III alone…). And from then on, there is such excellent puppetry on display, mixed with a variety of filming methods that make Chucky feel truly alive and threatening – shots where I expect a little person was used so that the walking can look totally natural, but where we only see his shadow, close ups on a hand with a knife, eliding the full image of the killer doll: an eye here, a reaction there, and occasionally top-notch puppetry that brings it all to life. The film makers don’t’ overplay their hand, saving the shots of Chucky fully moving for maximum effect. And he is effective – whether as a menacingly saccharine toy with eyes that seem to follow you, as a knife wielding murderer, or as a resurrected killer looking to implant his soul in the body of a 6 year old boy. It all works.
There’s not an ounce of fat on this 87 minute, horrific, playful, suspenseful flick, and it frequently goes big – showing its roots as a 1988 film by virtue of the fact that things so regularly blow up. But seriously, it is really highly produced, and in the end, when they just can’t kill this little monster and he gets burned and shot to pieces and just keeps coming, he is effectively grotesque and scary in his burnt, melted state, internal metal structures left sticking out of his formerly plump little fingers like claws.
Finally, in singing the film’s praises, why doesn’t Chris Sarandon have a higher profile? His dry sardonic charm is such a treat, and between this, Fright Night, The Sentinel, and the Resurrected, not to mention voicing Jack Skellington in the Nightmare Before Christmas (and, not horror, but come on, The Princess Bride), it seems like he should be a huge star. I mean, I see that he has been working consistently for the last 50 years, but I don’t necessarily hear about him that often. Also, how has his character never shown up on the Chucky TV show – which managed to bring back just about any significant character who ever showed up in one of the films? Now that it’s been cancelled, that’s forever off the table, but who knows, maybe a future film? But I digress.
Seriously, this was a great movie – I’m so happy to have rewatched it, and you can see how it could spawn a franchise – even one that would eventually come to take such wild stylistic turns. Ok, on to part 2!
Child’s Play 2 (1990)
This was an era of sequels and franchises and I’m so glad that Chucky’s creator, and writer of the whole series (who later became its director and the showrunner of the TV show), Don Mancini didn’t follow the lead of so many other 80s slashes in primarily following the villain as he finds a new set of characters to slaughter, but instead stays focused on Andy (at least for now – later the focus would shift more to Chucky, but that will accompany a major stylistic change). That said, Andy is the only recurring character as I guess Catherine Hicks (who played Karen in the first installment) wasn’t available (I read she was pregnant at the time of filming); her character is institutionalized for telling everyone the truth of what had happened to them and Andy is put into the foster care system, where eventually Chucky (not so dead after all) comes to find him, still intent on stealing Andy’s young body before he’s forever trapped in that of the doll. I think the Chucky films and TV show probably have some of the best continuity in horror, and that begins here.
In many ways, this feels like a standard sequel. It’s not entirely necessary, but it is fun, it has some good suspense sequences, a couple enjoyable characters (such as Kyle – the older foster sister who will return on the TV show, or the mean teacher who gets beaten to death with a ruler), and a top notch ending sequence in the toy factory where the Good Guy dolls are made. I don’t think that final scene is scary per se, but it is tons of fun; it is exciting, and colorful, and just as burned up Chucky at the end of the first movie is gross and creepy looking, melted, deformed, legs ripped off, knife handed Chucky is really grotesquely fun, and then he blows up. Cool.
I also enjoy the not-exactly-satire, but let’s say “bite” of the opening scene with the owner of the company that produces the Good Guy dolls dealing with the fallout of bad publicity from the much publicized case of a little boy saying their doll had tried to kill him. The owner is such a bastard and, by extension, there is clear editorializing about the self-serving greed and cruelty of modern business – it’s really not at all what the movie’s about, but it has fun making the owner of this toy company so very schmucky.
I feel like the second and third films are both a bit typical as sequels go, but at least this one holds up as a fun watch, even if the suspense of the first half of the first film couldn’t possibly be recreated as we’ve already seen the pint sized killer, and in this one, we see much more of him from early on. If I do have a criticism, it might be that we see him too much and whereas the first movie had such a good effect from teasing a hand here, a shadow there, in this case, he’s always running around and it’s hard for the puppetry to really make us all that scared of him.
But also, the more we get to know Chucky, probably the less scary he gets. I mean, he’s always a brutal killer, and he’s not at all a nice guy – he’s rather a total jerk, but at the same time, he is fun – and he has fun. He’s crude and mean and downright evil, but always an enjoyable screen presence, cracking wise and taking joy in his work. I suppose there’s a bit of shared DNA with Freddy Krueger – so many of the 80s slasher killers were some silent stalker in a mask – but Freddy and Chucky are both mouths – they just keep talking, joking, taunting, screaming. And both are really enjoyable murderous assholes. You don’t like either of them in the sense that you’d want to be friends or get a coffee or something – they’d kill you and mock you the whole time, but they are both fun to watch. Honestly, of the two of them, I feel Chucky is the weirder character, and I think one could have some ambivalence about him – but I think that will more come into play in the 4th and 5th films – for now, in the first two movies, he just has a couple elements that I wouldn’t expect to go together:
So, before he was a doll, he was a human killer, Charles Lee Ray, aka, “the lakeside strangler.” When we first meet him in Child’s Play, running from the cops with some kind of criminal partner, he looks kind of like a petty gangster, and his gruff personality and vulgar argot seems to match that. But he’s also a prolific serial killer, suggesting some kind of intelligent lone wolf predator. And also, we eventually hear that his murders all had a ritual voodoo element to them, such that he could magically install his dying soul in a doll and kick off this long running series, implying an altogether different, supernatural, even spiritual, focus. These three angles feel like they could be three different characters, but they come together to make him specific, unique.
I don’t remember how much that develops in the third movie (which I don’t recall being a series highlight – I see a “trivia note” on IMDB saying that it was Mancini’s least favorite as it was rushed into production so quickly that he didn’t have time to come up with new ideas), but it will really explode in the 4th and 5th. So with that, ever onward…
Child’s Play 3: Look Who’s Stalking (1991)
Ok, so admittedly another rapid turnaround sequel, capitalizing on the success of the first flick, but I must say I enjoyed this more than I’d expected to. Following the first, it takes better advantage of the tension that comes when we don’t see the doll move – and there is a whole new set of characters who have no reason to suspect this toy might slice their throat open. Following the second, it sets up a really fun, visual stage for the finale, moving the proceedings to a carnival, specifically inside the most impressive ride through haunted house I’ve ever seen – it’s a fun place to put this big final conflict, even if it is a bit of a beat by beat recreation of what’s come before. It’s got some enjoyable casting, such as the great Andrew Robinson (Hellraiser, Dirty Harry) as a creep barber, far too interested in the state of his young charges’ hair, who gets a real close trim. And while much of the story is a bit rote, it does hit a couple notes of, if not exactly satire, then at least viewpoint.
Following the opening of the second film, we start again with the toy company that produces the good guy dolls, deciding once more that no one remembers or cares about Andy Barklay and his killer doll and that they should put these ugly toys back on the market. Clearing the mess of the last film’s climax out of their factory, some blood from the previous Chucky doll drips into the vat of melted plastic and that’s apparently enough for Chucky to find new life on the production line, and the first thing he does is kill the evil CEO of the company. This is an enjoyable start, and perhaps it taps into the new direction the series will take, with a greater focus on Chucky himself – he is still an evil little bastard, but when we’re given such a jerk for him to kill first, we are invited to enjoy Chucky all the more (later, we won’t exactly be rooting for him to kill a bunch of kids – or maybe you will – I don’t judge).
And then we have the new setting of the film – it is years later (though this film was already in production before number 2 was released) and Andy (now recast as an older, teenaged actor), having bounced around the foster care system for close to a decade, is now enrolled at a military academy. The military isn’t exactly demonized, but neither is it shown in a particularly pleasant light, and I feel like that is an element of the abovementioned viewpoint – this institutional environment, fueled by hierarchy and bullying and authoritarian power games is not a healthy place for anyone, and its demand to ‘be tough’ or ‘be a man’ calls for a suppression of feeling that reflects the world’s refusal to believe what Andy experienced as a young kid and is still haunted by.
As Andy is older and not so vulnerable, I think we do see a shift of perspective to Chucky beginning here which will come to greater fruition in future films. He’s not a protagonist or anything, but he’s also not just an attacking killer – we see him get frustrated – try things and be balked by obstacles, make a new plan and target a new victim (a new, younger kid whose body he can try to steal). This also allows him scenes where he doesn’t need to move so much and thus, the puppetry can sustain a greater degree of verisimilitude than some moments in the second film.
But, by the end, the story goes pretty much where one might expect it to, we have a big showdown in a cool setting, and Chucky gets cut to shreds by a giant spinning fan – though having seen him return from much worse, I don’t think anyone would have reason to believe he wouldn’t be back. Honestly, I found it surprising that we didn’t have some final scare stinger to indicate as much, but also I guess it ended up being a longer period before the next film and perhaps its fate wasn’t so certain at the time. So let’s move on as the series really takes a turn, changes its naming convention, and Mancini injects some fresh new life into the franchise.
Bride of Chucky (1998)
So the first three films are all “Child’s Play” movies. With the fourth, they really become “Chucky” movies (or “_______ of Chucky,” to be precise), both in name and focus. But while many of the big 80s slashers seemed to care more about following their famous killers from film to film than their victims, they never took the time to get to know those killers like we do here. This is something different, and really fascinating, not to mention, a hoot. If there wasn’t enough time to come up with something new between the second and third film, in the 7 years between 3 and 4, Mancini was able to innovate. While they were still “Child’s Play” movies, the series mostly wanted to scare the viewer with its creepy, foul-mouthed, doll-inhabiting killer, but with Ronny Yu’s Bride of Chucky, that element of suspense is all but abandoned in favor of the kind of horror inherent in a black comedy, in the delicious fun of perversely getting to know and love the little murderer, plus his newly introduced paramour. I don’t think it really goes for many scares, but it commits to its violence and gore, and I think there is still something of horror in the film encouraging us to hang out with, and to some extent, root for its leading couple.
From the get go, the movie takes on a much more comic tone with a sight gag of the markers of many other famous horror icons being stored in a police evidence locker (a claw glove, a hockey mask, etc) before a garbage bag filled with the shredded remains of the Chucky doll from the third film is identified and purloined. And when the thief (a dirty cop after a quick payday) is bloodily dispatched by the newly introduced Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly at the height of her powers, right after Bound, and not long after her Oscar nominated turn in Bullets over Broadway), a whole new vibe is ushered in with her breathy, sexy-baby voice and her hyper-femme persona – Tiffany brings an entirely new, campy kind of fun into the world of these films.
She resurrects her long lost lover (she and Chucky had been an item before he ended up in the doll), he in turn almost kills her and traps her in a doll body as well, and they set off on an adventure to retrieve a lost voodoo amulet that will help them secure new bodies and carry on their romance/life of crime. This means hitching a ride with some teenagers running away together, who are leaving a trail of bodies in their path that each suspects the other is responsible for, before finally discovering that they’re being held hostage by Bonne and Clyde in doll form. The teens survive and seemingly defeat their plastic captors, but we know Chucky and Tiffany will return (and furthermore, having physically reconnected earlier in the film, the movie ends with the surprise birth of Tiffany’s bloody, sharp toothed doll baby – so there is still someplace new for the story to go).
The teen couple is fine, and their story of young love, hounded by a controlling stepfather (a very enjoyably dickish John Ritter) and harried by a series of mysterious and disturbing murders, tracks reasonably well, but unlike Andy in the first three movies, it is hard to feel like they are really the main characters. Rather, the film is all about Chucky and Tiffany and their tumultuous love-hate relationship. He’s terrible to her and she imprisons and tortures him (and periodically, over the course of four films and three seasons of TV, tries to, and even periodically does succeed at killing him), but they also love each other (and are turned on by each other – 4 movies in, this R-rated horror franchise has its first sex scene, and it’s between dolls, of course). We are in new territory and watching and enjoying it all in a new way.
Most, though not all, of their victims are somehow shown to be “bad people” (the controlling stepdad, a crooked cop, a lame, wannabee serial killer, a couple stealing from unwitting newlyweds) and ala some other horror franchises, the kills get more creative (a bunch of nails in the face, a champagne bottle shattering the mirror over a waterbed in a honeymoon suite), inviting us to enjoy the bloody mayhem with little reservation. The killer doll couple are rebuilding their relationship the best way they know how, and though they can be awful and petty and cruel, and frequently hate each other, they also bring out the best in each other and always eventually rekindle their love (of course, the “best” they bring out is “the best killer they each can be,” but that’s the wicked fun of a movie like this). The tension and heat of their relationship is where the film lives, and though it’s all explored with a kind of playful, campy distance, it still lands. This is something that will stay with the Chucky material through the remaining films and shows, even when the tone eventually goes back to being a bit more serious and scary.
I am not an expert on this, but I think it must be rare for the screenwriter to be so synonymous with a series. Often it happens with the director of the first film, even if they have little to no involvement in subsequent efforts. If you think Nightmare on Elm Street, of course you think Wes Craven, or you associate Halloween with John Carpenter, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Tobe Hooper, and I think all quite rightly so. Even if they had only peripheral connection to the rest of the films in their respective franchises, they all left a creative stamp on the originals that set the path for all to follow. But in the case of Chucky, though I think Tom Holland did a great job with the first film (as he did with another favorite, Fright Night), it is writer Don Mancini that I primarily connect with this series. He has been shepherding the story and the character along for more than 35 years, and I think it’s in this entry that he made his identity and aesthetic more present. To be fair, Ronny Yu does a really nice job, and there is some real style occasionally on display, but I think in this film, the writer is asserting himself, and will soon come to fully dominate the material.
This movie came along during a time when, following the success of Scream, horror was getting more self-aware and self-parodying. Now, I don’t think Bride rises to the level of self-parody, but there is a change of tone that feels very of this era (and at least one or two meta-jokes, such as when, asked to explain how he came to be like this, Chucky says that if his life were a movie, it would take 3 or 4 sequels to cover it all). Still, I think that the introduction of this relationship at the heart of the story, twisted and dark, and quirky and fun as it is, is a unique element, which will only deepen in the next flick, and for which I’m hard pressed to think of parallel examples (no matter how much it directly cites Bride of Frankenstein). I sure wouldn’t want a relationship like Chucky and Tiffany have (I’m a much more low-drama type), but I really do enjoy watching them in it.
Seed of Chucky (2004)
This film is probably not for everyone, but I rather love it. Mancini continues further in the direction he’s been going, for the first time taking up the mantle of director himself, and creates a weird, fun, very campy, very outré, very over-the-top, gory, meta, absurd, hilarious, queer, and even occasionally touching family drama. I think all notions of scariness are temporarily abandoned in favor of following these relationships down a rabbit hole and reveling in a playful, bold, audacious extremity. It is still a horror film, both in terms of how many eviscerations, acid melts, and decapitations it offers and in terms of the newly introduced Glen/Glenda’s traumatic struggle to come to terms with the violence of their parents, a violence which they have, at least in part, inherited.
In short, the killer baby doll born at the end of the preceding film has grown to adolescence unaware of its patronage, a captor of a prickish British ventriloquist. One day, they see a featurette on TV about a “Chucky” film being made in Hollywood, based on the infamous urban legend of a killer doll linked to a string of unsolved murders, and starring Jennifer Tilly as the doll’s love interest. The doll escapes and makes the trek out west to find their parents (and is able to resurrect them out of animatronic dolls on set as they still have the magical amulet from the last film). Reanimated, Chucky and Tiffany learn they have a child who is struggling with gender identity issues (born, as a doll might be, without sex organs, they don’t know who or what they want to be – it’s somewhere between a trans and non-binary narrative, but let’s say culturally specific to the smooth-crotched-doll community). Chucky wants a boy and Tiffany wants a girl, so they settle on Glen/Glenda and make an attempt to be good role models and kick their murder addiction (unsuccessfully), while making a plan to put Tiffany into the body of Jennifer Tilly (who will be impregnated with Chucky’s seed (we have a title!) so that Glen/Glenda will have a human form) and put Chucky into the body of Rapper-Director, Redman (who may be casting Tilly in his upcoming biblical epic). Little, of course, goes to plan, but along the way, there are genuine character developments, and a fun ‘coming out scene’ by the end.
Don Mancini is an out gay creator, and as far as I know, that wasn’t being hidden before, but following the elements of camp introduced with Jennifer Tilly’s Tiffany in the last film, I’d say that this is the first time the series is really explicitly “queer.” Glen/Glenda’s story is entirely focused on a bundle of identity issues: there is the obvious question of gender (which will only deepen as the series progresses), but also, they really struggle with a question of who and what they are as a child of this killer pair. Are they also a killer? Is that something they were born with and can’t change, and should come to accept and love about themselves, or is it a choice they can turn their back on? Beyond that, though Chucky more or less comes to be as supportive of his gender-non-conforming kid as one can hope for (he’s still a murderous bastard, but after some time, gender is no longer an issue), Glen/Glenda initially has to deal with a father intent on making them accept ‘masculine traits,’ who is determined to make his child a ‘boy’ – we see them close to cracking under the stress of parental expectations and demands, and by the end, when Glen/Glenda cuts off their father’s limbs and head, shouting “are you proud of me now, daddy?” it is easy to see represented, the collected rage of many an effeminate little boy lashing out at a father who couldn’t accept his child.
Of course, the film also just takes on a much more ‘camp’ tone here. It never goes fully in the direction of parody, and it does maintain its own sense of reality, but there is an ‘extra’ quality to both performances and filmmaking that infers a kind of ironic distance (not to mention how Jennifer Tilly, voicing Tiffany, can speak both so deferentially and so bitchilly about ‘Jennifer Tilly,’ the real life actress – such as a moment when the doll has to drag Tilly’s unconscious body across the floor and complains about how fat she’s gotten). This camp quality is underlined by the inclusion of director, John Waters in a small cameo (his face gets melted off with acid as a kind of father-son bonding experience – but it’s ok; he’ll come back in a different role on the TV series).
But ultimately, the most enjoyable queer-adjacent – coming to love yourself and being proud of who and what you are – development belongs to Chucky himself. For four films, spanning 14 years, he has been trying to get out of this doll body and be human again. Finally here, on the cusp of completing the plan (though Redman is now dead and Chucky would be ending up in the body of Tilly’s chauffer), at the last moment, Chucky decides that he likes who he is and there’s no need to change and be a human again. He is a killer doll and he likes being a killer doll – he finally fully embraces his own ‘othered’ identity and proudly ‘comes out.’ It’s not exactly a moving moment (though Glen/Glenda does get some of those), but it is a fun moment, an “ah, I see what you’re doing there” little twist that I certainly appreciated. And seriously, good for him. We all love him as a killer doll – if he were human, he’d just be a murderous jerk (as we will see in the next film).
All of this may sound heavy handed or overly serious, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. For all that the film plays with these issues of gender and identity, it does so in a wild, free way, which I think could come off as too much, or even insensitive to a contemporary Gen-Z crowd – but isn’t that part of the joy of camp? Being able to go so over the top, being able to offend, but all with a playful irony – we can enjoy the “badness” of it, but no one is advocating for any of these things actually being “good.” There is a rich frisson in that paradox which makes it all the more enjoyable (and which also separates this sort of work from the kid of straight-out, ugly edge-lording one might bump into on Twitter). This is the least scary, but probably the goriest film of the series to this point. It has more sex and nudity, by far. It has a puppet masturbating to an issue of Fangoria magazine. It has Brittney Spears being exploded in a car crash. It has a head being garroted off someone’s body as puppet lovers get spattered with his blood and share a genuine romantic moment. It has Oscar nominated actress, Jennifer Tilly being inseminated against her will by a doll with a turkey baster. It has a perspective about social matters, but it expresses that perspective in an absurd, gleefully violent and perverse way, and it is all the more lovable for it.
From time to time, there is a horror movie that wears its socio-political perspective on its sleeve so much that it gets blowback. While I generally find the kind of people who would complain about, for example, the feminist messaging of a movie like the 2019 Black Christmas unpleasant jerks, I can agree that a film can suffer from being too on-the-nose – I can appreciate a message and still feel that themes are better explored in dramatic action than voiced as polemic artificially put into the mouths of characters by a well-meaning author. But I must say that in this case, while the perspective of the creator is obvious, it is also handled with an ironic humor and so covered in eviscerations and beheadings that I think it comes across so much more enjoyably than it otherwise might.
Perhaps not every little thing works perfectly – some jokes may feel obvious, and what exactly was with that “made in Japan” thing, given that we know the Good Guy factory was in or near Chicago in the first two films, but little failings notwithstanding, this one is rather a delight. Sadly, it was the last one released cinematically.
Curse of Chucky (2013)
Following the progressively higher camp of the last two entries, Curse of Chucky (again written and directed by Mancini) takes a hard turn back to straight horror territory (but not too straight – there’s at least one lesbian couple), initially feeling so different as to seem like a bit of a soft reboot (though by the end, all of the story is woven together and this is clearly an expansion and continuation of all that has come before). But stylistically, it feels completely different, and is the first time in decades that a Chucky film has been particularly scary.
Key to that (beyond filmmaking that definitely takes on a darker, more menacing tone than the last few films) is the fact that for the first time in quite a while, we are aligned with new protagonists who are not Chucky et al.; nor are they anyone who knows who Chucky is or has fought him before (as was true for Andy in the first two sequels). Primarily, we have Nica Pierce, and her family which has come together following the seeming suicide of her mother (the night after a Good Guy doll was delivered to her, sent by an unknown person). Of course, we know who Chucky is and that he is clearly behind the deaths that start piling up, but these people don’t, and just as in the first film, Chucky isn’t shown to move or speak of his own accord until approximately halfway through the runtime, which really promotes scariness.
Past that, it is quite a successful, tight little bottle movie – over the course of just more than 24 hours, in this one house, the doll is delivered, the mother dies, the family comes together, and, one by one, just about everyone else is picked off until pretty much only Nica remains, following a pretty classic slasher formula (which hasn’t been the case for earlier films in the series), before revealing a much more personal story at its core. It is dark and suspenseful, well shot and scored, and it plays with the dramatic irony inherent in the audience knowing much more about this doll than the characters. That said, there is still a bit of a dark, comic tone, such that some characters seem simply doomed by virtue of how humorously unpleasant they are. Thus, as with a pretty standard slasher, there is some fun to be had from worrying that a character might be killed, but there’s also fun to be had, waiting for some jerk or another to bite it. Past that, for a loyal viewer, it is quite mysterious – for most of the film, we are left to wonder what Chucky is doing here – what is he after? Why is he targeting these people specifically? After spending so much time with him as a viewpoint character, having his intentions suddenly closed off to us, creates a sense of intrigue, and I think also makes him scarier again, leaving us far more in the position of his potential and eventual victims.
Furthermore, when we finally learn what the connection is between Nica’s family and Chucky, how far back it goes and how each has cause to blame the other for their respective fates (rightly or wrongly – I think Nica stands, so to speak (she’s spent her life in a wheelchair – because of him) on far more solid ground here), Chucky comes off as a more menacing, uglier character than he has in some time. We have flashbacks to the series of events that led up to him being chased by the police at the beginning of the first film when, at the edge of death, he put his soul into the doll. In those flashbacks, Chucky is less a hilariously crude and violent puppet, and more a cruel psychopath who would hold a pregnant woman hostage, creepily pitching woo at her while murdering her husband and threatening her family, before leaving her to die with a knife in her belly, such that the baby she births (Nica) is born paraplegic. He’s not fun – he’s disturbing and frightening. And yet, when we flash back to the present, in doll form, he’s still a good time – that’s how movies work.
There’s also a fun bit of behind the scenes family connection as Nica is played by Fiona Dourif, daughter of Brad Dourif, who’s been voicing Chucky since the very beginning. And she’s great – a very warm screen presence, giving us a character who will go through a great deal before all is said and done (and who will later in the franchise be called on to deliver a solid vocal impersonation of her dad).
And then, after feeling like such a standalone movie for 80 of its 97 minutes, so much so that it could even feel like some kind of reboot, so disconnected from everything else, the penny drops and everything slams into clarity. This is still a series, and the ending of this movie both reaches back and looks forward, setting up a new context for what is next to come. In short, it doesn’t end well for Nica, but she’s still alive, and she and Chucky and Tiffany (as well as at least one key character we haven’t seen in ages) will all be back in the next film, and on three seasons of TV.
This really was a good time, and it is interesting how the series of films really seems to occasionally reinvent itself, all while continuing a larger story, relatively consistent in its history (though maybe not always in its rules of “how possessed dolls work” – why doesn’t Chucky bleed anymore?). Ok, only one more to go…
Cult of Chucky (2017)
An interesting change that applies to both Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky is that unlike earlier entries in the series, Chucky has now been active for years between the installments. At the end of the first 4 films, Chucky was melted or exploded or ripped to shreds or burned and shot – each time, he was at least seemingly dead. Not so at the end of Seed. That time, he survived and went off to do whatever he was going to do for years until resurfacing in Curse, with a plan obscured to us. The same is true for Cult. Obviously, so much must have happened between the two films, and while some of it is inferred, we will never know everything, helping to build both mystery and a sense of a larger life passing beyond our view – this is only one moment in a bigger story, and we won’t ever get to see the whole picture. Thus, this movie feels the most like an entry in a serial, laying the groundwork for the TV show to come, both in terms of characters and important plot developments, as well as in the forward momentum of this kind of continuing narrative. That said, this is also, beat for beat, one of the most engaging movies in the series – I would have been happy if it had felt a bit more complete by the end, but moment to moment, I was totally in, and ate up the unfolding story.
In Cult, we at least touch base with a significant character from each era of the Chucky franchise. Andy (from the first three) returns, played once again by Alex Vincent, all grown up himself, but is also joined by Tiffany (from the next two) and Nica (from the sixth) (plus, the post credits sequence reintroduces a key figure from Child’s Play 2). And in combining all of these significant figures, Cult carries forward something of each era’s tones. We once again have a scary story about someone who knows that a little doll is responsible for all this murder and mayhem, but whom no one believes, this time not because they are a child, but because Nica, following the events of the first film, has been held responsible for the deaths of her family and imprisoned in an insane asylum. But added to that genuinely scary context and style, we still retain something of the camp-adjacent black comedy of Bride and Seed, and I think this might be the funniest Chucky himself has been for the whole series to date (“Ok, let me explain something to you. I am a vintage, mass marketed children’s toy from the ’80s, standing right in front of you, holding a very sharp scalpel”). And then there is the newfound serial hook of it all, which I feel has particularly come to play in the final two films, and which sets up much of the feeling of the TV show. The second and third films, while both fun in their ways, had felt a bit like retreads of the first – the next two went off in a wild, totally different direction – now the story is really moving forward, developing and changing significantly from one feature to the next.
And as a lead to anchor it all, Fiona Dourif shines. I feel for her plight, both in terms of her Cassandra-esque nightmare, and in her survivor’s guilt, which has allowed her terrible, abusive therapist to gaslight her into accepting that she was actually responsible for the deaths in the last film, though she very clearly knows differently. And then, by the end, when Chucky successfully hops into her body, somehow miraculously, at least while he’s in possession of it, healing her of the paraplegia he’d caused her in utero, she makes Charles Lee Ray an enjoyable human villain for the first time, imbuing herself with the play inherent in the doll, which hadn’t fully surfaced in other portrayals of him in his non-evil-doll form. As she plays it, his wicked delight is simply infectious – I mean, he’s always cackled in evil madman fashion (I saw Mancini on Shudder’s Queer for Fear documentary citing the original Invisible Man as a direct inspiration), but this may be the most I’ve vibed with it.
And there are new twists and turns, namely, due to the fact that between films, Chucky leaned a new voodoo spell that now lets him split his soul into multiple vessels, letting him animate many killer dolls at the same time – and letting them hilariously bicker with and praise and/or mock each other. Furthermore, the reintroduction of Andy into the story, as he advances his own plots to get revenge on the doll that stole his childhood, adds a wildcard to the mix. Many elements are in play at all times, and anything can happen.
As with the previous entry, much of the runtime functions as a standalone film, frequently scary and gory in ways that got a couple of gasps or cringes out of me, but also consistently funny, and almost always intriguing, with small touches of gothic mystery layered atop the cold, clinical, creepy setting of the institution, with the main gestures towards larger serialization coming primarily at the end. Also like the last movie, this is a very contained story – almost all taking place in the asylum during a relatively set period of time – and it gives room for some very enjoyable performances from both Dourifs, father and daughter, as well as the other denizens of the hospital, and of course, eventually, Jennifer Tilly. During a post credit sequence, we even meet Kyle again (the older foster sister from the second film), so just about the only significant figures still absent are Glen and Glenda (who will return on TV) and Andy’s mom – who we’ve seen him speak to on the phone, but who never made it back onto screen (also, as written above, I would love to see the return of Chris Sarandon’s Detective Norris from the first film, but I’m not holding my breath).
All in all, the film series, as it stands, goes out on a high point, and leaves things set up for TV to carry the story forward (while also introducing new main characters, all with their own storylines and main preoccupations).
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Well, this was a fun little project – it’s been a blast to revisit these all, and I can’t really express how much I appreciate the narrative and stylistic variety on display. There are a few other, “bigger” horror franchises, but for me, this one holds up the best as a whole, picture to picture. Sure, I may like the first Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street more than many of these, but the level of quality running through this whole series, the sense of larger continuity, and the visible artistic play that’s allowed the series’ creators to take on such wide ranging approaches have all kept the series both fresh and fun, while also being so consistent and rooted in continuing characters, raising this series up above the pack.
Sometime I will watch both the recent doc, which I just don’t have time for right now, and rewatch the show, which has been some of the most fun I’ve had watching TV in years, but for now, I think seven films is enough to hit publish on. Hope you’re all having a good November out there.
