As you may have already surmised, I didn't like Child's Play. It's a film that doesn't ever make the right decisions at any point, treating viewers as if they will all be situated perfectly within the teen age bracket that it is aiming for (and I know some teens who won't be impressed either).
It all starts with a disgruntled factory worker removing safety protocols from a toy doll before then committing suicide. One thing leads to another, and that doll (a Buddi who decides to name himself Chucky, voiced by Mark Hamill) ends up being owned by young Andy Barclay (Gabriel Bateman). Andy lives with his mother (Karen, played by Aubrey Plaza), it's a new home for them, there's a man on the scene, there's a police detective who is often in the building as he visits his mother, and a few other characters that are supposed to be worth watching. Chucky starts killing, all for the sake of his friendship with Andy, and his ability to be linked to various apps makes him a lot more dangerous.
I am not familiar with the previous film by director Lars Klevberg, or writer Tyler Burton Smith, but it seems, rightly or wrongly, that they were picked here as a couple of people who would toe the line and give the studio what was expected. I am assuming an awful lot here, and may be being very unfair, but it's hard to see anything here that represents a unique vision or talent. If that was the case, it would be easier to believe that Klevberg and/or Smith were chosen because someone had seen something prominent in their work that they thought could work well with the Child's Play concept.
Here are the things that work in this movie. The music, another great bit of work by Bear McCreary (who has been on top form recently). The casting of Mark Hamill in the vital voice role of Chucky. The first major human murder scene.
Almost everything else fails. Take, for example, the fact that a character is slightly hearing-impaired. This is all well and good if it is for representation. It isn't though. It's mentioned once or twice in a way that makes us think it will be very important later in the movie, and then isn't used in any way that feels necessary. Take a scene in which Chucky uses an app to terrorise and kill someone. Except he doesn't. The big set-piece ends with our knife-wielding doll . . . wielding a knife. One death scene has a character jumping up to stand on a desk that has a bloody circular saw on it. The relationship between mother and son never feels real, unlike the original film, there aren't any actual scares (although, to be fair, the film does provide a couple of amusing moments, which prove that it occasionally works as the black comedy it is trying to be), and the third act staggers from one horribly ill-conceived moment to the next.
Bateman is okay as Andy, Plaza is as underused as she so often is in more mainstream fare, and Smith is the best character in the movie. Nobody stinks up the place, not even the other younger cast members who work alongside Bateman in the strand of the film that plays out a scenario building up the whole "the kids will save everyone" vibe, but there's also nobody good enough to help distract from the many shortcomings of the film.
Horror movies can be fun, they can be dumb, they can be sheer entertainment without having to be anything else. But there have to be certain things done right to allow film-makers to get away with that. It can be hard to put a finger on the things that have the opposite effect, sometimes it's just an overwhelming feeling of laziness, sometimes it's a lack of logic that breaks the rules set out within the movie universe, but this film has enough of them to spoil your enjoyment. Well, it has enough to spoil my enjoyment. Others have had fun with it.
4/10
You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.
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