"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Child’s Play (remake)

You all know the story of the 1988 horror classic CHILD’S PLAY: a single mother buys her son the talking doll he wants for his sixth birthday, she brushes it off as imagination when he claims the doll is telling him weird things, a babysitter gets killed and because of the tiny footprints at the scene the police suspect the kid did it. We only see glimpses of what the doll is up to, but we know that a cornered serial killer named Charles Lee Ray performed a voodoo ritual and his spirit is hiding out in there. And the mom goes from worrying about what’s wrong with her son, to worrying she’s losing her mind for starting to wonder if he’s right, to the total shock of seeing the doll walk around and talk to her and stuff. And now she has to stop this supernatural threat that no one will believe her about before the killer transfers his soul into the body of her son.

This new movie called CHILD’S PLAY that is officially considered a remake is not that story. You still got a single mother (Aubrey Plaza, INGRID GOES WEST) trying to make ends meet working at a store, and she still has a son named Andy (Gabriel Bateman [ANNABELLE]), who she buys a doll named Chucky. But Andy is 13 years old (huge difference) and the doll is an A.I. infused walking and talking robot (also huge difference) and he is not possessed by Charles Lee Ray or anyone else (hugest difference). So there’s no secret, everybody knows it walks around and talks to you and stuff, and the kid is not young enough to be confused by it. Instead of dealing with the classic “no one believes me” theme (until it’s implausibly shoe-horned in near the end) the tension comes from the kids (he has friends in this) making the poor decision to try to hide things from the adults, even though Andy is friends with a nice cop who could help him (the great Brian Tyree Henry from Atlanta, WIDOWS, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK and SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE).

If you’re going to enjoy this movie – and I did – you have to be able to let most of that go. The original (still ongoing in an upcoming TV show) Chucky series overseen by creator Don Mancini is a miracle of tonal left turns, going neck deep into glorious absurdity (BRIDE OF CHUCKY, SEED OF CHUCKY) and back (CURSE OF CHUCKY). But that first film holds up as an actually scary movie with great atmosphere and production value, and it treats everything, especially Catherine Hicks’ mother character’s dedication to her son, with absolute seriousness. The remake is closer to the tongue-in-cheek slasher tradition of things like JACK FROST and the LEPRECHAUN sequels, a style that rose in the late ’80s and was prominent in the ’90s but has been somewhat neglected during the J-horror remake period, the HOSTEL period, the Platinum Dunes period, the found footage period and the A24 period. It kinda makes sense that a character in the movie has a KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE poster on his wall. This is less silly than that, but it’s fun, gory horror that got some big laughs in my sparsely attended screening and has a few stretches of gruesome delight.

(Quote from an older lady talking to my friends and I afterwards: “Great movie, right? But why was everybody laughing? I thought it was creepy!”)

In this version, Chucky is from a line called Buddi, advertised as sort of a cross between Siri and a robot butler. It can connect to the internet or your devices, order you food or a self-driven ride share type car or bring you your slippers or whatever. It’s artificially intelligent, synced to everything on your phone, and more powerful than you’d think (I laughed when Andy had to pin him down and yelled “Why is he so strong!?”), so it’s obviously a product that presents many dangers, but this particular one had its “behavior inhibitors” turned off by a disgruntled factory worker in Vietnam.

It still seems weird that a 13 year old would want this doll, especially when you see that its main function is to talk about being your best friend and sing a song about it, but the mom buys it for him as kind of a misunderstanding. He just laughed at a meme about a Buddi doll humping. But he reluctantly tries it out and it gives him someone to talk to. I like the strange sight of the two just hanging out in the neighborhood talking like two people.

When they announced that Mark Hamill (THE GUYVER) was voicing Chucky it seemed on one hand like the best movie star they could’ve used, because he’s such an expert voice actor, but on the other hand a little too similar of a voice to Dourif’s. But that’s not really a problem because it’s not the same character at all. Dourif was the true, evil voice of Charles Lee Ray, but when he was pretending to be a doll it was a child’s voice. Hamill is always the doll and doesn’t understand that he’s being creepy. One section of the movie I loved is when he just creeps Andy out by being overly clingy, staring at him while he’s asleep and wanting to sing to him about friendship all the time.

He gets dangerous as he watches the humans around him and picks up on things like how to use a knife and who upsets Andy. In the tradition of your more lowbrow slasher movies, there’s a “can’t wait to see this guy get killed” character in mom’s shitty boyfriend Shane (David Lewis, AIR BUD: GOLDEN RECEIVER, HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION). I’m not always a fan of that technique, and Catherine Hicks never would’ve let a prick like that into the apartment, but it works for me here. There are some good laughs at the gradual reveals of how much he sucks, at the ways Andy and his friends train Chucky to bother him, and then in his inevitable murder scene, by far the movie’s greatest achievement. I’m gonna not spoil it but it’s an elaborate set piece with some good gimmicks and gags and it ends with a weird and inspired punchline that actually caused me to applaud and not be able to stop laughing into the next scene. And then the aftermath of that event takes the movie into another level of “I can’t believe they did that,” followed by some “I’m not sure about this” contrivances, but at least it’s not something I’ve seen a million times.

From the trailers and stills I didn’t think I liked how the new Chucky looked, but in the movie I really did. Yeah, he’s basically a bootleg of the original, but I like his cartoonish proportions, his light-up eyes, his poses, and he looks cool walking around like Teddy in A.I. They definitely use plenty of animatronic puppetry, and the shots where I was conscious of it being animation it was never because it looked bad, only because he was doing things I didn’t think a puppet could pull off.

So this is a pretty good movie. I liked it. But it’s not as good of an argument for remaking everything as it is for not remaking everything. The basic look of Chucky and the logo are the only important elements it uses from the original, and its main weaknesses wouldn’t apply if it was presented to us as an original killer robot story.

I’m sure they started with the CHILD’S PLAY rights and said “how do we update it to have to do with the modern world?” And it’s a smart idea to add in today’s opt-in surveillance state. Chucky can spy on people through devices connected to the Cloud, he uses sound and video recordings against people and can beam them onto TVs and stuff. But director Lars Klevberg (whose one other feature, POLAROID, was scheduled to be released by Dimension in 2017, but was shelved when Harvey Weinstein received criticism for being a serial rapist) and writer Tyler Burton Smith (a writer of video games and upcoming KUNG FURY 2) are also taking a swipe at adults obsessing over new iPhone models. A worthy target, but I wish they could create a slick looking product and packaging that might actually be popular instead of being wedded to a thing from a 31 year old movie that was inspired by but not exactly satirizing toys that had been popular with children a few years before that.

Frankly I don’t believe very many people would want this product. It’s designed and packaged for children, advertised to adults, and mostly has features that are supposed to be useful to adults, but then talks to you like you’re a baby. Would people be as addicted to their iPhones if they looked like clunky Play Skool knock off junk and Siri always wanted to tell you you’re her friend and sing you a lullaby? The new model Buddis look like characters from GARBAGE PAIL KIDS: THE MOVIE, sometimes with carpet glued to their faces, and are sold at a store called “Zed-Mart” that looks like a K-Mart they forgot to close down in the ’80s and has a logo that would be rejected by a dollar store.

In some ways this remake is a slicker, bigger budget version of low budget ’80s movies, but some of this shit seems straight up PUPPET MASTER VS. DEMONIC TOYS. I’m more picky than most about this type of stuff but while I’m at it let me call bullshit on this trope of the “giant corporation named after old man (Tim Matheson, MAGNUM FORCE) who serves as his own pitchman in very successful advertisements.” I know that’s how they did it in shitty old movies (I exclude GREMLINS 2 from this description) but I feel like we can push for today’s movies to seem more like they’re made by humans familiar with the world of humans.

Speaking of the world of humans, I commend them for trying to put in a reference to the near-slavery conditions of Chinese iPhone factories and stuff like that, but budget limitations make it seem like maybe 10 people are exploited at this factory, and the plot blames one of the victims of this exploitation – a coding expert forced to work a grueling factory job and be yelled at for losing his concentration – for the deaths in this movie!

Well, I suppose to be fair there is plenty of blame to go around. We can also point a finger at Tobe Hooper, whose TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 inspires one of Chucky’s more fucked up activities. I was happy to see that great movie shown so much love in this (thought that subplot’s probly gonna play weird in England, where from what I’ve been told the CHILD’S PLAY series is still strongly associated with a murder case that tabloids blamed on part 3.)

So anyway, this is an enjoyable killer doll/robot movie with branding that forces me to say that it’s no CHILD’S PLAY instead of that it’s way better than DOLLY DEAREST.

P.S. I still wish there was a twist where they worry that the doll is being controlled by some pervert, and then they triangulate where the signal is coming from and discover the real Brad Dourif voiced Chucky cackling and holding a remote control.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 24th, 2019 at 10:58 am and is filed under Horror, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

62 Responses to “Child’s Play (remake)”

  1. That line made me laugh too and was where the movie started winning me over. But then it didn’t really go further with the absurdity and resorted to the usual “make the kid look crazy so Chucky can get away with stuff” shit. Glad you liked it more.

    I have many questions about the factory in Vietnam. Like why can safety protocols be toggled by anyone? They should just be permanent in the program. Even the top exec shouldn’t have the ability to remove them.

  2. Ronnie Gardocki

    June 24th, 2019 at 11:30 am

    The origin for Chucky is literally The Simpsons joke “ah, you’ve got this one set on ‘evil'”.

  3. The Doll from Hell from the Simpsons Halloween Special III was made years after Child’s Play. It was inspired by Gremlins, Child’s Play, and especially Trilogy of Terror (“Amelia” with Karen Black).

  4. The origin for Chucky is undoubtedly Teddy Ruxpin, one of which I had.

  5. Man, now I know the universe hates me. I’ve been begging for years to go see a horror movie with a sense of humor in the theater for literally years and this is how they do me? With this fucking soulless abomination that is an affront to everything I stand for?

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    Discover & share this Childs Play GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

  6. I imagine that the remake is loads better than Child’s Play 2 and 3. Also, Mr. M, are you going to see the fucking movie or are you just going to bitch about it without backing it up with actually seeing the fucking thing. Asking for a friend :)

  7. Yeah, I love rewarding my enemies with hard-earned cash. It’s my favorite thing in the world.

  8. I thought the original Chucky was inspired by the My Buddy doll.

  9. Oh Vern, you kidder! April Fools has passed. You’re either too early or too late with this joke article!

  10. Dtroyt, it wasn’t based on My Buddy but it was originally going to be called Buddy. My Buddy came out beforehand so they changed it to Good Guys.

    Maj, Annabelle Comes Home has a great sense of humor. Brightburn was ok too.

  11. Mancini is so bitter and vengeful over this remake – no residuals, I suppose – that (even though he himself has been milking every cent out of the rotten udders of Chucky’s corpse for decades, vomitting out garbage like that cretinous “Sperm of Chucky” – the seventh sequel or so) I’ll bet if that lousy Chucky TV series flies, he’ll try to have “his” demon Chucky kill an AI Chucky in it somehow.

  12. Sternshein how dare you put CHILD’S PLAY 2 on the same level as 3. 2 is an example of horror sequelizing done right. 3 is really not though I still love “presto! You’re dead!” cause that barber was a real asshole. I’ll probably catch this if I have the time. Sounds different enough to be fresh and these are the type of remakes that sit better with me. But more then likely it will be on cable. I still have a new GODZILLA, a new SHAFT and a new TOY STORY to catch up with before even entertaining the thought of paying for this.

  13. I’ll be watching Mancini’s TV show next year. I actually enjoyed the last couple of sequels. Sorry, not sorry.

  14. For the most part, the Mancini Chuckys have still been decent. CURSE OF CHUCKY was better than SEED.

    I wasn’t planning to see this remake, and feel sympathy for the guy having his creation taken from him. Then Jason Eisener told me a few weeks back that the new one felt like a Joe Dante movie and I was at least intrigued. Maybe Mancini is being too vocal, but he doesn’t sound unreasonable.

  15. I thought this was pretty fucking horrible! And I don’t even like the original CHILD’S PLAY. The only one I really like is BRIDE OF CHUCKY. I liked how that movie fully embraced Chucky’s cackling Jersey scumbag personality. It also had a decent director, a good dp and some funny jokes.

    Turning Chucky into an app with a creepy baby voice is a whole lot less fun. There’s a lot of lazy, lowest common dominator stuff about how this new technology is scaaaaary! It’s a concept born of every stupid conversation you’ve overheard about “the cloud” (What is it even?? Am I right? Scary stuff…) or apps or voice control. Everything just feels lazy and dumb for most of the runtime. I knew we were in trouble when single mother Aubrey Plaza monotoned something like “Look at those kids outside in the dark on their phones. Go play with them.” to her son and she wasn’t joking?

    The best and most memorable part of the movie is the death of Aubrey’s boyfriend. But for me, a lot of the funny came from how the scene was so obviously born of backwards-ass, lazy Hollywood movie writing. Someone thought the idea of a dude’s face-skin stretched out on a watermelon was funny and they worked backwards from there. I mean lol the guy climbs up a big ladder at night to take down his Christmas lights, takes the lights down by wrapping the wires around his body, falls into a watermelon patch in his front yard(?), and is killed by a mini-watermelon harvester? Just watch that clip and the clip of Andy wrapping up the head in wrapping paper and presenting it to Detective Brian Tyree Henry’s kindly old mother and skip the rest of the movie.

    I also felt bad for Brian Tyree Henry. He’s a really talented guy and deserves better. I got especially sad when he had to shoot Chucky and then say “THIS IS THE END.” with a blank expression on his face cuz we gotta have those lame callbacks! People love ’em! Except not really!

  16. I don’t remember Mancini coming off as “vengeful” at any time, or even unusually bitter. He said his feelings were hurt and extremely little beyond that. It’s not like he’s screaming at people who enjoyed the new movie, or encouraged fans to boycott it–they took that prerogative on themselves(and call me crazy, but I don’t think Universal would see this killer doll movie bomb and want to make more). And even though he has my sympathies, his series is still happening…last time I checked.

    All behind-the-scenes drama aside, I’d say the remake itself is one of the stronger films to feature a tiny red-haired killer named Chucky.

  17. I don’t like all this gatekeeping of Child ‘s Play movies.

  18. And I don’t like that a major studio is allowed to steal the life’s work of a creator right out from under him because of a loophole in a contract he signed 35 years ago. Whether or not the TV series goes through, all that hard work Mancini did to keep his character and his universe alive for the past three decades has been pissed away in one fell swoop because of this half-assed cash-in. Yeah, people who care will be able to tell the difference between this knockoff and the real deal, but the general public will likely say “Didn’t we just get a new Chucky? And didn’t it suck?” And then that’s it. No more Chucky. I was planning to watch new Chucky movies every five to 12 years until either Mancini or Dourif finally went off to meet Damballa. But that’s not happening now. So yeah, I’m a little upset that a source of joy in my life has been likely rendered moot. And why? Because somebody had a shocking new direction to take the character in? No. Because a junior executive figured out a loophole in an old IP that would allow his studio to turn out new product without excessive R&D. And then it didn’t even make money. Nobody wins here. Not the artists, not the Ellises, and certainly not people who actually like Chucky movies. It’s not just a bad remake. It’s a dick move.

  19. I mean, maybe it’ll happen. Mancini has worked miracles before. But I think it’ll be hard to get Universal too interested after this flopped.

  20. Yeah but Mancini didn’t even come up with the Charles Lee Ray character in the first place. His original script had a really stupid plot about blood mixing or some such dumbshit.

  21. I really don’t like John Carpenter riding the coattails of all the hard work from Howard Hawks. Don’t give me this sanctimonious bullshit about creators rights.

  22. I have my doubts that this movie is going to have much of an impact at all on Mancini’s future Chucky endeavors. If there is any, seems like the most likely scenario is this does well and builds interest for the tv series. If it flops, well, the only people who really paid attention to the last few Chucky movies were die-hard horror freaks who are going to stick with the series regardless. Normies don’t even know Curse and Cult exist.

    I haven’t seen this one yet, but I’ve loved the last few Mancini movies and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to hear other people being pleasantly surprised at how much they liked the remake. The world has come to terms with there being multiple flavors of Spider-Men and Batmen running around at the same time, so if the viewing public is willing to accept a multiChuckyverse, I’ll count that as a win for us.

  23. I do believe John carpenter and Universal paid for the rights to remake The Thing above board. Same with cronenberg and The Fly and most remakes.

    Mancini’s only public comment has been “I don’t know her” which is smart of him not to take the bait when people ask him to talk shit about the remake. But should he not be angry when the studio says “take this Child’s Play somewhere else. We don’t want it.” So he does and makes it a success that lasts decades, then 30 years later some new regime says “oh yeah we want to make this again?”

    I mean, the Broccolis are still mad at Kevin McClory.

    Had it turned out well we’d have the gift of two Chuckys but it sounds like for most of us this was #notmyChucky.

  24. Yeah, Mancini is handling this pretty classy, although he has every reason to be angry. (And I’m sure the walls of his apartment have a bunch of fist sized holes since this was announced.) If this had happened between SEED and CURSE it wouldn’t be a big deal, but now his CHUCKY series is still running, probably better than ever and with amibitious plans for a TV show and some fuckers are suddenly doing something, that might ruin all this momentum.

    There is “Why remake this?” and “Why remake this NOW!?”

  25. When Ronnie said “The origin for Chucky is literally The Simpsons joke ‘ah, you’ve got this one set on ‘evil”,” he was not saying that The Simpsons inspired the first CHILD’S PLAY. He was accurately describing the plot of this remake.

    I think both Mancini and Majestyk are correct to be angry/disappointed about the whole thing. It’s just a shitty thing to do, especially when it’s only to use a familiar title and not even the premise of the original movie. Like, if before Florentine could do another UNDISPUTED the studio has somebody else do a bigger budget “remake” called UNDISPUTED and it’s an unrelated prison movie with characters named Iceman and Boyka who aren’t even fighters. Let me be on record as against that.

    I really appreciate Mancini keeping the series alive for so long and doing so many fun things with it. And the remake seems more inspired by his movies than the original that it’s named after. The only other horror series I can think of that went so far under the vision of one primary person is PHANTASM.

  26. I wonder what’s happening about that UNDISPUTED TV Series that is being planned?

  27. I’m a big Chucky fan and not a big fan of remakes, but still, acting like remaking Chucky, and remaking it without Mancini, is some kind of unforgivable crime against a genius is a bit much. Mancini has been exploiting Chucky as a commercial product, and still can apparently so good for him, but he’s writte a few mediocre sequels himself so it’s not like he has a perfect track record that an awful new film is now ruining. Do we honestly believe that he’s making a Chucky TV show because he’s a creative genius who still has so many great original stories he wants to tell about Chucky? It’s ok if it’s just “I want to keep making money with Chucky, since I don’t really know how to make anything else but more Chucky-related stuff” but it’s not like they’re painting a new Sistine Chapel without Michelangelo here.

  28. I don’t think the level of genius a creator may or may not possess has anything to do with it being a callous and mercenary move for a corporation to swoop in and try to hijack the goodwill created by said creator’s lifetime of hard work 30 years after said corporation told him to go fuck himself. Who cares if he doesn’t make anything but Chucky? How many non-Phillip Marlowe books did Raymond Chandler write? What if his former publisher decided to hire a ghost writer to pen competing Marlowe novels while Chandler’s series was still ongoing? Would that seem like fair play to you? For me, the creator-controlled nature of the Chucky series is one of its major selling points. It’s Mancini’s own personal mom-and-pop business and I find it incredibly charming how he’s managed to carve out this surprisingly versatile little playground to express himself in. I don’t actually give a damn if this has no effect on the real Chucky series. On general principle, fuck this movie and everyone who made it. None of these Ellises who endeavored (and failed) to profit off of Mancini and his family of longtime collaborators’ hard work and commitment get any kind of benefit of the doubt from me. They might have thought they could rise above the mercenary nature of this project, but in the end they stood up to be counted with the enemies of personal expression. Who gives a damn what they believe?

  29. For those feeling like chucky’s wifi “powers” are incongruous with a children’s toy…

    Granted, all those bots look like apple products instead of 80s fads, but the filmmakers were 100% riffing on these kinda robots and potentially spoofing these specific pitch videos. Chucky says several phrases that sound exactly like the crap these ‘prototypes’ say.

  30. I do think the original kind of satarises 80s toys; the Good Guy multimedia empire is too much for Andy’s mum’s very legitimate reasons for not being able to get him a doll. Granted it’s not a particularly angry satire, maybe even a little affectionate. But it’s one of the elements I most enjoy about the original, and that aspect is the main reason I do kind of want to see it, even though it does make me uncomfortable morally

  31. “I don’t think the level of genius a creator may or may not possess has anything to do with it.”

    Correct. It’s completely irrelevant.

    Legally, there’s not much Mancini can do, since he signed a contract (as people who are new to industries are often pushed to sign things that aren’t in their best interests). It’s totally an ethical issue.

  32. But to my knowledge Mancini still gets to make his Chucky TV show… So it’s not like, say, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster getting completely screwed out of Superman, it’s more like KFC changing the 11 herbs and spices without consulting Col. Saunders while still letting him sell KFC branded fried chicken…
    I don’t know, Terminator sequels make me angry because James Cameron’s first two movies were just perfect and then they had to keep ruining that without Cameron’s involvement. Mancini himself managed to make to make the Chucky series un-perfect as early as Child’s Play 2 and made it even worse with Chucky 3, so making a mediocre Chucky just for money never seemed like an anomaly or something the beloved Creator would have never accepted.

  33. This all kinda reminds me of Kevin McClory’s 20 year legal battle with Eon and the resulting THUNDERBALL/NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN situation.

  34. “So it’s not like, say, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster getting completely screwed out of Superman”

    Only in terms of CHILD’S PLAY. Simplified: He owns the rights to the character of Chucky, but the rights to a movie named CHILD’S PLAY about a doll that kills people, aren’t his. (Of course as a whole it’s more complicated.)

    “it’s more like KFC changing the 11 herbs and spices without consulting Col. Saunders while still letting him sell KFC branded fried chicken”

    More like some guy who helped opening the very first KFC is opening his own chains of restaurants named KFC because of a legal loophole, using a character named Colonel Sanders who kinda looks like him but also different, while the original KFC is still allowed to run their franchise, but isn’t allowed in big cities or near airports and train stations and also has less money for his chains and advertisement and only a dedicated group of fans know and care about it, while the rest of the world believes that the new KFC is somehow the real deal, based on the original one.

  35. And again, us CHUCKY fans are not really that enraged about the existence of the remake. After all we survived remakes of much better movie’s than CHILD’S PLAY. It’s really just the timing. 10 years ago the series was dead and even most fans weren’t really excited about a new movie. This would’ve been a good time. So that they remake it now, while Mancini is not just doing his thing again, but also doing it well and works on a TV show, is just shit.

  36. Well in the producer’s defense, how many other opportunities are there gonna be to release a new Chucky movie the same weekend a new TOY STORY comes out? You can’t pass up an opportunity like that.

  37. I kinda worry about the TV show, to be honest.

  38. Fred- Thanks for the clarification. I’m pretty surprised it wasn’t inspired by My Buddy. The look is very similar. Also, didn’t they sort of keep the buddy name. It’s been a long time since I watched the first one but I thought that Chucky was one of a line of Buddy dolls. Very possible I’m remembering that wrong though.

    I probably won’t be seeing the remake. Even without the behind the scenes questions about it, I didn’t really know why they were making it. And to have apparently changed it in such fundamental ways seems like a situation where they might have benefitted by just making it it’s own original thing like Vern says.

  39. I haven’t seen the remake and since like all modern remakes, it was made because they wanted to use an old, profitable idea to make more money, not because an auteur thought they had an interesting new take on old material, I’m not even trying to defend its existence. It’s just weird to see people here get on their high horses about Mancini getting “screwed”… you don’t see people get so upset about the existence of Batman comics, movies, videogames, etc, that were not made or approved by Bob Kane, let alone Bill Finger, creators who actually got royally fucked, while Mancini seems to retain at least some level of ownership over his creation. And considering that his writing is, at best, the 4th reason why his creation is still popular today, I’d say he doesn’t have it too bad after all.

  40. You know, it’s crazy, the conversation actually managed to make me angry at Don Mancini. Now I’m thinking, you know what, fuck that guy, let the Dourifs and Jennifer Tilly make a good Chucky sequel with a good writer and a good director instead of him.
    I mean, that or maybe people should stop making Chucky movies or TV shows.

  41. I absolutly DORE the two newest Mancini Chucky movies…CURSE and CULT. They are stylish, well written and batshit crazy. Easily in my favorite movies of any genre in recent years.

    This remake didn’t make me that mad though. I was entertained by it at least.

    And I know….the Chucky series is so meta and weird that at some point, the remake could be part of the original series. Kind of like how the Roland Emmerich Godzilla was used in FINAL WARS, they could make an old Chucky vs. New Chucky at some point. Or maybe the real Chucky shows up and kills the makers of this one…etc, etc, etc…the possibilities are endless.

    But yeah, I am on team New Era Brad Douriff’s Daughter movies. They are crazy, cool, weird, interesting….anything I could possibly want out of late era entries in an already weird franchise!! Easily the most creative long running slasher franchise.

  42. Man…that meant to come out ADORE.

    I can’t stress it enough…I love, love, love CURSE and CULT of Chucky with every ounce of my being. They are perfect movies.

  43. Actually Toxic a correction: Bob Kane was never royally fucked. He just made sure that Bill Finger was. Something that was finally rectified a couple of years back.

  44. Yeah thanks for mentioning that Broddie. The way Bob Kane fucked over Bill Finger and basically just got away with it is one of those historical situations that has always made me mad. It’s obviously not like a war crime or anything, but it’s just the story of an asshole being an asshole with no real repercussions to him that’s just annoying, especially as a Batman fan since small times.

  45. The movie really suffers from having a shitty, unimaginative director who was clearly afraid to show the puppet doing anything during the kill scenes. I mean, why would we – the audience who has followed the adventures of a killer doll for 7 movies over 30 years – want to SEE THE FRIGGIN DOLL? No. Way better to have shitty POV shots with ‘static’ to cover up the fact that you couldn’t even do a long-take properly. With the exception of 2 shots in the pumpkin patch scene and one shot in the basement scene, the gore is also poorly done. You went R-rated, why skimp on the money shots?

    Rarely have I ever been so aware of the ramifications of child labor laws on a film. So many scenes and stretches of film just abandon Andy completely and then, when he is present, they only had like, 3 exterior sets. How many times did they reuse the street filled with steam (4 times, they used it 4 times by my count), or the same graffiti filled bus bench vista (5 times).

    And then they must have had major trouble with the animatronics or something, because the grand finale is 100% botched. They build up to a great concept of Chucky taking over the whole store and killing EVERYONE, but then… what? He sends out 3 drones, bites one dude with a furry robot and kills the *same* manager in two different ways. Wtf? There’s no way that the script included the watermelon subplot and then said, fuck it, let’s put like, 4 gags in our finale. They even went to the effort of fabricating other buddy dolls with full animatronics, then barely use them.

    I was with the movie for the first half, but the last half hour totally lost me. The real shame of it is, I think there was a good script here at one point. Chucky singing the buddy song when they tear him to pieces hurt me in a way I didn’t expect. And the callback during the climax felt well-earned. Plus, The relationships between Andy and his mom, as well as the officer and his mom (and Andy’s mom and the officer) were all well above par. While the specifics of the stalk and slash scenes were absurd, there’s a certain lunacy to them that I liked. And the elevation of including all the smart devices in Chucky’s bag of tricks was a good, modern angle. I didn’t even mind the Stranger Things sidekicks. But the heavy handed producers and the weak willed director sunk the project.

    Sorry for the stream of consciousness rant.

  46. Also —

    The kids should have been watching a YouTube compilation of “Texas Chain-Saw Massacre 2 — Best Scenes” instead of watching the whole movie (unrated cut, no less!) would explain why all the footage was out of order and felt more modern.

    Post-Script:

    Did anyone else notice the fact that they reused the same shot of the chubby kid laughing and pointing at the screen TWICE during this sequence? Weirder still, they reuse the shot between two out of context cutaways to the same TCM2 scene. Like, they show parts of the Chop Top’s hammer murder, Leatherface’s face removal, the chainsaw attack on the bridge, and a few others, then return to additional shots from the face removal sequence. It felt like an editing mistake. Almost like they had 2 variants of the same beat and then accidentally put both versions in the final film.

  47. Oh great, the best part of the film exists only because of the legal department and not Gonzo creativity… I shoulda known better.

    https://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3568324/spoilers-kill-childs-play-director-lars-klevberg-wasnt-allowed-put-film-exlcusive/

  48. I guess I was wrong when I said it “shows love” for TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. Sounds like he hadn’t even seen it before it was on a list of things he could use.

  49. Yeah. He didn’t even seem to know that cutting off faces is like, leatherface’s whole ‘thing.’ Like, he makes it sound like someone else pointing out that TCM2 features a scene of facial degloving #medicalterm. Reading that quote made me like the movie a lot less and even question my prior compliments to the writer. I figured the King Fury 2 credit meant the writer was the kind of hardcore geek who would know deep, obscure lore like, “Leatherface cuts off people’s faces and wears them in at least one of the TCM movies.”

  50. “Facial degloving” is the most horrifying medical term I have ever heard and now I wanna make a horror movie about a killer who cuts people’s faces off and call it FACIAL DEGLOVING.

  51. C.J.

    So, what you’re saying is, Texas Chain-Saw Massacre is only the second most upsetting title possible for that film?

  52. The director’s next movie coming out isn’t a remake but it might as well be considering it’s essentially the plot to every Japanese horror film ever made.

  53. I’d say it predates J-horror and originates with the first Goosebumps book, SAY CHEESE AND DIE. Seriously, it’s the exact plot of goosebumps #1

  54. I wonder if he made that movie because his production company has the rights to the Goosebumps IP? Lol

  55. Nah, “Say Cheese and Die” is a 1000% better title than friggin, “Polaroid.”

  56. Nah, “Say Cheese and Die” is a 1000% better title than friggin, “Polaroid.” They probably had a weird business deal where they hold the rights to the original outline for SCaD, but not the finished novel.

  57. Ronnie Gardocki

    July 1st, 2019 at 6:28 pm

    I’ve seen Polaroid and can say the Goosebumps TV show episode adapting Say Cheese and Die was better. The latter even had more star power as a young Ryan Gosling was in it.

  58. Well, movie tickets were just 4€ yesterday, so I saw it…
    I can’t remember where I read a comparison to the RoboCop remake, but yeah it’s kind of like the RoboCop remake: sure, the world might be a better place if it didn’t exist, but as a movie it’s not as bad as some of the stuff the character has already starred in, and the most disappointing thing is that it does a few clever ideas to update the premise but in the end it doesn’t do much with them. OmniCorp was more believable than Kaslan, adressing the character’s new appearance with “make him more, uh, tactical, paint him black!” was smarter than keeping the idea of a doll in 1980s toddler clothing in a big yellow box in 2019, but Child’s Play has a few good kills and jokes and has Mark Hamill’s performance to make it less forgettable so in the end I’d say the Child’s Play remake is better than the RoboCop remake.
    It could have been better, it could have not existed at all, but I didn’t hate it. And I’ll still watch more Mancini-approved Chucky stuff, and I’ll probably watch the sequels to the remake, too (the movie is turning a profit, as it didn’t cost much).

  59. Pretty sure that’s Tim Matheson as the CEO in this one.

  60. Thanks Darth Brooks. I don’t know where the hell I got Matthew Modine!

  61. For sure.
    It wasn’t a very memorable role for anyone to be honest, ha.

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