Child’s Play (2019)
Directed by Lars Klevberg
Remakes. So many damn remakes. I think every slasher of note has been remade. The Prowler and The Burning are the only two quality slashers from the 1980s boom that haven’t had sequels or remakes and I really hope it stays that way. When this was announced I groaned, like many of us did. The original was not a perfect movie, but it has a rabid fan base and honestly it was done rather well and deserves some recognition. So now in 2019 they did a new polished version of Chucky, so yeah lets take a look.
The story was changed a little from the original. This time around Chucky is an actual android doll, much in the way of Furby or something. Chucky is basically a virtual assistant like Alexa or Siri, he has the ability to manage all the things in your house, hooked up to the internet. We find out this particular doll though wasn’t made correctly. A disgruntled employee disabled all Chucky’s safety protocols. The doll is shipped out and purchased by mother Karen Barclay for her son Andy. The doll starts out innocently enough like any of the other Buddi dolls on the market, he glitches a lot but learns as time goes by. Soon we find the doll is showing signs of vengeance and anger. Now Chucky begins piling up a body count and threatening Karen and Andy. The mother and son duo have to save the day and stop Chucky’s rampage.
Ok, I’ll go right at the first thing everyone noticed with this movie. The doll. The doll looks like shit, let’s just say that. He looks like Willem Dafoe, but like a mannequin version of Willem Dafoe. It is hard to explain but the original Chucky looked much better. The special effects were ok. There are a lot of practical kills, which I respect a lot. The kills were gruesome and gory, so if that is your thing you should be happy. The rototiller kill in particular was pretty impressive and gross at the same time. There’s a kill with a table saw that was just stupid. A guy was holding on to a pipe above the saw, Chucky heats the pipe up, the guy falls on the saw. The whole time I was yelling at my TV “Just swing over the saw and land on the damn floor idiot!” It was much like the later Saw movies where the traps are escapable and dumb.
The acting was fairly decent. Aubrey Plaza is Aubrey Plaza, she is the same in everything. She is very dry and awkward. I feel like she was a little miscast in this role as the mom. She doesn’t come off as a mom at all, more like a big sister. This time Andy is like 13 or 14 not 4 like the original movie. That’s not a big deal I guess and boy that plays him (Gabriel Bateman) did a fairly good job. The boyfriend Shane is such a douchebag that you can’t wait to see him die, and thankfully he was taken in a brutal way. David Lewis plays Shane and I guess since I hated him so much, he got the job done. Gone is Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky and this time he’s voiced by Mark Hamill, whom is an amazing voice actor. The police officer Mike was played by Brian Tyree Henry, he was alright there wasn’t really much to set him out from the rest of the cast I guess. I just can’t get over how awkward it was to see Aubrey Plaza as a mother, I really can’t explain it much, it is just something you have to see.
This is a polished and update version of the original, but the whole time me and the people I was watching this with kept saying “the old one looked better than this”. Which is kind of hilarious. This movie had a $10M budget, it seems like they could’ve made Chucky look a little better. Some of the changes were interesting, like making Chucky a virtual assistant gone haywire instead of a doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer. Like I said the original movie wasn’t perfect, so making changes isn’t a big deal. The tone of the movie was odd at times, some of the kills were comical but as a whole the movie is serious and it’s a little confusing. Again, Aubrey Plaza, as great as she can be was miscast in this movie, and its kind of distracting. Parts of this are so corny and eyerolling that this is probably a one time watch for me. If you want to see a Child’s Play movie, watch the original one, or even part 2 which is also fairly decent. I give this remake a C-. I want to give it a D+ but I feel like it falls somewhere in between. Parts of it were good, and the new approach was interesting but the miscasting, corniness and fugliness of the doll just don’t do it for me.
