Movie Review: Chucky’s Violent Toy Story Gets Rebooted In "Child’s Play"

You can’t keep a deranged doll down.

Wanna hear how scary the latest Child’s Play movie gets? It stars 34-year-old Aubrey Plaza as the mother of a teenager. That’s right, TV’s most sardonic millennial, April Ludgate, plays mums now. Watch it dawn on the 30-year-olds in the audience and see them run screaming out of the cinema.

The realisation of our fleeting mortality aside, there’s not heaps to be spooked by here, which is actually on brand for this goofy franchise about a serial-killing red-headed doll. The original Child’s Play from 1988 was followed by six sequels, each more meta and blackly humorous than the last, if not always increasingly funny. By 2004’s disgustingly-titled Seed of Chucky, the saga had become a literal joke. Too far, Chucky, too far.

2019’s reboot takes us back to the beginning and tries to return a little menace to proceedings, courtesy of Tyler Burton Smith’s swift, economical and dastardly screenplay. That said, it may be horror in theory, but if you’re not laughing through the giddy carnage, you’re doing it wrong.

Plaza plays Karen Barclay, the single-mother to 13-year-old Andy (Gabriel Bateman), who is apparently the product of her "productive" Sweet 16. They’re struggling financially, and the hearing-impaired Andy is having trouble making friends in their new town. So, Karen brings a coveted talking 'Buddi' doll home from her job at the Zed-Mart, to serve as a companion for Andy and for them to use as a smart-home operator. (This is how they justify a 13-year-old boy in the year of our lord 2019 wanting to own a freckled doll in overalls.) Unfortunately, this particular 'Buddi'—who christens himself 'Chucky'—just happens to be a sabotaged model from the Vietnamese production plant, with no limiters on his language or actions. In what should be a warning for all of us in how cavalierly we treat our intelligent technology, Chucky picks up enough bad habits from his homeowners to eventually lawnmower a man’s face off.

Director Lars Kleber has jettisoned longtime Chucky vocaliser Brad Dourif, subbing in voice-actor and sometimes-Skywalker Mark Hamill, and that's not his only change. This new Chucky doll has a slightly more bulbous and distended head, and though that may mean he looks creepier, earlier, it simply does not compare with the innovative puppet from 1988. Also, as un-PC as he was, I do miss the old Chucky; a chaotic vessel for a serial killer’s soul who spouts the worst things you’ve ever heard, and enjoys violence to a hyper-erotic degree. This time, the fritzing Chucky doll turns homicidal simply by hanging around some screeching kids while watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which, okay, fair enough.

There is still gnarly pleasure to be found in nu-Chucky’s grisly murders, though they are sadly few and far between. (Spare a thought for the actor Trent Redekop, whose character gets caught in a Rube Goldberg-like trap of Chucky’s devising that threatens to circular-saw his body in half, crotch-first.) And the ending—suggesting an apocalyptic uprising of Buddis—is better as set-up than punchline.

Thankfully, there's a murderers' row of talent in the cast. Hamill’s Chucky is cheerfully disturbing, albeit lacking Dourif’s perverse injection of personality. Plaza, who long ago proved she can play more than ironic detachment, is a fun and spiky twist on the part originated by Catherine Hicks. Meanwhile, respect to young Bateman, who is asked to cry so voraciously at times, he manages to eject real snot and spit, twice. Dude goes for it.

Best of all is Brian Tyree Henry as the kindly detective-next-door who happens to wind up on all of Chucky’s cases. Brian Tyree Henry isn’t just our finest working actor; he might be our only working actor. Last year alone he graced Widows, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, If Beale Street Could Talk, the second season of Atlanta and four other films, with another five set for release within the next 12 months. Do Hollywood producers understand that Brian Tyree Henry is a finite resource? How are our world leaders future-proofing the inevitable Brian Tyree Henry shortage? This is the main question I asked myself when walking out of Child’s Play, so take that as you will.

3/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for strong horror themes and violence.