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| Promotional art from Child's Play (2019) |
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Cult of Chucky (2017)
Cult Of Chucky (2017)
Convicted to a mental institution for the crimes
committed by Chucky in the previous film [Curse
Of Chucky (2013)[, Nica Pierce (returning Fiona Dourif) has been made to
believe that the titular serial killer turned toy never lived (or killed, for
that matter). However, when her psychotherapist (read: psycho the rapist) Dr.
Malcolm Foley (prominent TV actor Michael Therriault) introduced a Good Guy
doll (the basis of Chucky’s reincarnation via voodoo for dummies, as if you
didn’t know) to the group therapy sessions, soon Chucky makes his presence
known, in bloody manner. In the meanwhile Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) has grown
up to become a gun fanatic (who can’t keep a relationship past the second date
because they Google him and they find all sorts of weird shit that he did in
the previous films) that keeps Chucky’s head in his apartment, confined, in
order to keep himself happy by torturing it. It was inevitable that a cult
would form, and this is not a spoiler on my part (it says so in the damn
title), although it would be much more suspenseful if Universal had went with a
less revealing title.
Writer/director Don Mancini did the impossible and managed
– for once – to successfully turn a franchise from horror to comedy and back to
horror again. He also managed to do another impossible and aside from keeping
the storyline about a very confined set of characters, essentially creating a
family of people, he also kept it within the family with most people in front
of the camera and behind the camera as well. Speaking of the storyline, this is
mostly set within a clinic, and it is very reminiscent of ‘hospital horrors’
including Halloween Ii (1981) and Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers
(1996), and as such it also happens to be of the ‘slow burn’ variety (by all
means, this is a very hypotonic film). The music goes for a Psycho (1960) mood, and so do the titles
in the beginning, but this is where the similarities end. Other than that this
is a very modern film, and it is keeping up with the Blumhouse horrors that are
so popular nowadays and it delivers several well-staged jump-scares. If
anything, producers Ogden Gavanski and
David Kirschner (who has been with the franchise since the beginning) has
managed to once again keep the budget low and the concept high. While certainly
not the ‘best’ franchise in horror history, we are all happy to have this
monster doll terrorize us once in a while.
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Child's Play (2019) poster
Child’s Play (2019)
Down on her luck, single mom Karen Barclay (Aubrey
Plaza) is struggling through double shifts at the local big store in order to
provide for her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman). One day she brings home a
secondhand Buddi doll (This is actually a great reference, as
the original film’s doll was based upon the My Buddy dolls that were popular
amongst 1980s kids), the one that all the kids want, thanks to
aggressive all-day advertising on television. Andy is hesitant at first, but he
accepts the high-tech gift – and names it Chucky (Mark Hamill provides the
voice); you see, the doll can connect with all your smart devices and do all
sorts of things. However, this particular doll was programmed by an angry
Vietnamese factory employer to be faulty on purpose, and the malfunction goes
as far as generating murderous instincts, especially if anyone tries to hurt
Chucky’s friends.
This reboot of the Child’s
Play franchise (1988 – ongoing) leaves behind the possessed doll of the
original series, and takes a more up to date approach that revolves around the
dangers of technology. The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre 2 (1986) plays on a television screen, so it is also pretty easy
to see where this is going aesthetically as well: the kills are imaginative and
the end result is overall fun. On another note, the soundtrack by Bear McCreary
is pretty epic, and maybe a bit too bombastic for a film of this scope (as in
budgetary means; the film was made on a modest $10 million budget,
and it went on to gross $43 million).
The project was announced on July 2018 by MGM and
early on it was made known that the original series’ people (creators, stars,
etc.) would not be involved. The shooting lasted from September to November
2018, followed by some pick-ups in December of that same year. The marketing
department went bananas in April 2019 and released several posters in which
Chucky was killing or otherwise menacing the toys from Toy Story 4 (2019). The film was made available to the public on
June 2019.
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