To be honest, when I first heard they were rebooting Child’s Play I was more than a bit puzzled. The latest installment, Cult of Chucky, did the impossible by not only merging the series’ muddled mythology into a single coherent narrative, but also was a decent film to boot. Another reason for my bewilderment is unlike most horror franchises, Child’s Play hasn’t really suffered from that huge drop of diminishing returns as the likes of Halloween or Friday the 13th have. Further murking up fan expectations for the reboot, it was to be directed by Lars Klevberg, who was an interesting choice considering his only other film was Polaroid. You know, the the film about a haunted Polariod camera that was produced by Dimension Films that has been sitting on the shelf for almost two years thanks to the Harvey Weinstein scandal?
Child’s Play still is the story of Andy, now a hearing impaired young boy, who like most kids these days prefers the companionship of his 5 inch LED to actual real children. Like the original, Andy and his mother (Aubrey Plaza) recently moved in to a run-down apartment building in the not so great part of town. We get the hint that much like Toy Story’s Andy, this Andy’s father left him with his mother, who is then forced to work a soul crushing retail job to support her and her son. Aubrey Plaza here feels both perfect and too young in the role, and this fact is commented on to great effect by more than one character in the film. For Andy’s birthday, his mom blackmails her boss to take a defective Buddi doll home that would have otherwise been destroyed; now this is where the film veers off quite a bit from the original. In this film the Buddi doll is a lot like a walking/talking Alexa in that it can control other networked products while also being imbued with a powerful AI to be the perfect always learning companion to your child.
The problem is in the Asian sweatshop where Andy’s Buddi is assembled, in a rather scathing crack at Apple (hence the “i” at the end of Buddi), a worker is fired and promptly turns off all the behavioral inhibitors on Buddi’s AI before jumping to his death. Andy quickly becomes the popular kid in the building when other kids start to notice his Buddi, who has named himself Chucky, is “different” — he can swear and do things that they realize could be problematic from the start. Obviously these kids have seen The Terminator. But the turning point is when Chucky sees The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and he sees Andy and his friend’s reaction to the film. They can’t stop laughing, as you should when you watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. But this reinforces that murder is something that’s funny, and thus begins a downward spiral of murder, mayhem, and deceit. Chucky doesn’t want to take over Andy’s body in this iteration, but instead, like Fatal Attraction, Chucky will take out anyone that gets in the way of his “perfect” friendship with Andy or hurts him.
First off I have to applaud that not only are the majority of the protagonists kids, but they don’t feel cribbed from that Stranger Things Spielbergian template; they feel a bit more authentic. They also exhibit the loss of innocence and that desensitization which is not lost on Chucky’s overall perception of the world around him. The script here is smart and feels like it has something genuinely interesting to say, while still having plenty of gore and comedy to please the casual fans just here for the body count. There feels like a lot here to unpack about technology and the generation growing up with limitless access to almost everything they could want at the click of a button. While my only qualms would be some of the CGI feels a bit rough around the edges at times, and Chucky bears an odd resemblance to Christoper Nolan, that’s a bit of small nitpick coming from a fan like myself.
Simply put, Child’s Play is the best possible scenario for a reboot of this franchise, because you know there are going to be more. It’s an update of the material while still staying true to what worked about the original film, this touching story of a boy going through a rough time, who loves his mother and is hunted by a homicidal doll. But instead of Voodoo magic, it’s more in line with Skynet. It does this all while still delivering the pitch-black humor and over the top kills you’ve come to expect from the series. The one thing missing is some of the weirder “rapey” sexually frustrated aspects of Chucky’s personae, which I am honestly not too upset to see go. So there you have it, Child’s Play is another can’t miss entry in an already great year for horror that, to be honest, still keeps surprising me.