Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Lars Klevberg
Screenplay by: Tyler Burton Smith
Produced by: Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg
Executive Producer: Chris Ferguson
Starring: Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plaza, Brian Tyree Henry and Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky.
‘Are we having fun yet?’
‘I guess.’
‘Yay!’
Child’s Play (1988) is a classic horror movie I remember watching when I was about twelve-years old.
I remember it was about a doll and it was scary; and I remember cringing and trying to get to sleep after seeing feet hanging out the end of a bed getting sliced by a knife.
So, I knew I was waking into a movie about a killer doll. But was somehow surprised by the horror, meaty horror at that, where the writing and the performance of single mom Karen (Aubrey Plaza) and son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) suspended reality enough to get a decent scare going when this life-like Buddi doll, doesn’t get possessed or start off being evil, but becomes a serial killer by mimicking what people do; by doing what he thinks his best buddy Andy wants him to do.
Afterall, he is a Buddi doll.
Chucky would do anything for his best mate. Including ripping the skin off faces, hanging people, stabbing and setting up angle grinders to saw pesky people in half.
Child’s Play re-imagined manages to give a classic horror, but somewhat hard to swallow concept, a believable hook.
Here, we have ‘Chucky 2.0’ based on the technology of today – where electronics are interconnected, wireless and activated by voice command.
So all we have to believe is that Chucky is an animated doll capable of responding to commands like Siri or Alexa.
Sure there were contrived moments like a person with broken legs, bones broken through skin, still able to crawl rather than writhing in agony; and rope around a neck suddenly loosened when a body falls to the ground. But it still kind of hung together.
And that had a lot to do with the tone of the film, director Lars Klevberg balancing the gore and horror with some dark humour that really hit the mark, like the question of why is there fruit involved?!
Just think watermelons being a similar shape to a decapitated head.
Yep, Child’s Play is gory and funny with Mark Hamill voicing the evil doll that is Chucky, surprisingly effective on so many levels – childhood, Star Wars, evil doll. Why not? If the voice fits.
There’s enough essence of Chucky-the-original to keep fans happy, while the fresh take lifts the original concept somewhere the audience can laugh with and not at – a close call for me at the beginning of the film, saved by the wry performance of Aubrey Plaza and the likable Brian Tyree Henry as Detective Mike who lives down the hall.