CHILD'S PLAY by Urizen

   It goes without saying that the Child's Play series has had its ups and downs over the years. The series started back in 1988 with the original film and since then has continued to this day with the recent Cult of Chucky and a new television series coming out. In 2018, it was announced that a reboot would be happening with a different creative team. Many people expressed their annoyance at this, including the original writers and actors, but nonetheless it was happening. While I was initially unsure how to feel about the movie, my hope for it got lowered when I saw the first trailer. There was a lot that was different, all things I could deal with after processing it all for a bit But one thing really stood out. I hated how Chucky looked. Even now after seeing this movie, I still hate it. The one saving grace for me was the cast. Having Aubrey Plaza and Mark Hamill, was enough for me to be happy, truthfully, and think this stood a chance. It also had some clever marketing moving forward, with the posters depicting the murder of the Toy Story toys. The more I think back to those, the more that may have actually hinted to the plot a little . . .

   Child’s Play stars Gabriel Bateman as Andy Barclay and Aubrey Plaza as his mother Karen Barclay. The two have recently moved to a new area and are living in a pretty run down part of town. Andy has been having a hard time with the very recent move and his problems only worsen as he has to deal with Karen’s new boyfriend Shane. As we see from advertisements at the store where Karen works, this giant corporation, the Kaslan Corporation, is planning to bring out the second version of its high tech doll, the Buddi.

   

The Kaslan Corporation is huge. Everything even slightly electronic seems to have been made by them.  We see television sets, cameras, drones, housing thermostats, lighting, self driving cars and more. The Buddi doll is this smart doll that can imprint on people and can control all Kaslan Corporation technology by using voice commands. It can also interact with you, be used as a camera, and so much more. At the beginning of the movie, we see a Buddi assembly factory in Vietnam, where a worker is laid off for spacing out too often on the job.  In frustration, he removes all of the safety protocols from the doll he is working on before taking his life.

   

As time goes on, people start returning Buddi dolls due to the upcoming release of the better, newer version.  One person says how the doll they had was defective and returns it. Given Andy’s birthday is coming up and Karen can't afford a good gift for him, she blackmails her boss into letting her take the doll. At first Andy shows disinterest in the doll, which also appears to be malfunctioning. When asked to give it a name he goes with Han Solo (of course we needed a Star Wars reference), and it replies that its name is Chucky. From there the two manage to start bonding and we even have Chucky help Andy make some friends, Pugg and Falyn.

   

One of the main differences from the original starts happening from here. In the 1988 film, Charles Lee Ray transferred his soul to the doll to save his life and planned to transfer his soul into a child which ended up being Andy. Here we have almost a commentary on AI where without the safeguards, the Buddi doll has its task of being Andy’s friend and making him happy, but then as it goes about figuring out the best way to do that, Chucky takes things to the extremes. We see Chucky starting to exhibit violent tendencies, attacking the family cat and expressing interest in harming people that hurt Andy. When Andy shows he is upset, Chucky seems truly sad because he hurt Andy. This Chucky is still obsessed with Andy, but it is an obsession of being his friend and making him happy, no matter the cost.  It is actually an interesting way to do it that had me feeling bad for Chucky.

   As the movie goes on, Chucky starts exhibiting more and more violent tendencies and it comes to the point where Andy must stop him. All the while the family has the attention of their neighbor, Detective Mike. Detective Mike was honestly my favorite character. He was such a great and nice guy who truly cared about Andy and Karen. He was great. Unfortunately for everyone in this movie, Chucky only cares about Andy, so it doesn’t matter whether it is family or friends, no one will get in the way of their play time.

   To be honest, this movie is actually pretty good.  It certainly isn’t the best Child’s Play movie and not fantastic by any means, but it was enjoyable. I certainly don’t regret seeing it. I was asked at one point what I’d rate it and I stick with my answer for that, probably a 5 or 6. There definitely are problems with the movie. As I have said before, Chucky's new look is not great. It’s not so drastically different that you can’t tell it is Chucky or anything, but his face is just not good. I get that it is supposed to be creepy, but it just isn’t good. Also, the film’s tone isn’t really consistent. Obviously with something like this, the horror element is going to build up as it goes, but for a bit at the beginning it almost feels like a kid's horror movie or something. One thing that also hurt it to me is not having the human personality for Chucky. He does get more of his own personality of sorts towards the end, but he isn’t the wise cracking, crude psycho he was in the original. In the end with this, he is an AI, so while a personality eventually forms, he mainly operates and acts based on his purpose. None of this ruins the movie, but it does knock it down a little.

   Everyone in the movie did a great job acting, with no one really standing out as particularly bad. Hamill occasionally sounded a bit like the Joker but I think for that type of character, it was bound to happen. It also has a pretty good soundtrack. There is a song sung by Hamill that is this song the Buddi dolls sing for the kids, and it also has the original Child’s Play theme. It is pretty good.

   On the subject of the original, I appreciate that the dolls are called Buddi, after the My Buddy dolls the Good Guy doll was based on for the original movie. It was a nice touch. The movie keeps with the original in that it really isn’t terribly scary. The horror element more comes from the gore and what I believe is commentary on the AI. In this day and age, we are constantly advancing our technology and making more and more progress with artificial intelligence. It seems that quite often people are trying to warn us that we need to be careful with this progress. In the modern day, having Chucky be a rogue AI isn’t terribly surprising and is a clever way to update the series, trying to seemingly make it a little less cheesy.

   There is a character type in anime called yandere. A yandere is a character that will do anything to be with the person they love, even killing their loved ones or harming that person so that way they can be with them forever. This movie is yandere Chucky. That was all I could think when seeing him get to this point of “if your friends are interfering with our time together, then I’ll make sure they all leave you, then all you have is me.” It really is a crazy, interesting take.

   Overall, I’m not one hundred percent happy with the direction of the new series, but I hope that if we get more from this rebooted franchise, they take the negatives that people have had and improve on those elements. With the TV series in the future, I’d be really excited to see the commentary that it might have on the reboot as well. While this movie might not be your best friend, it certainly is a pretty killer flick that will be worth your time.