Child's Play 2019 Is Viscous Bad Doll Goodness
So…who wants to be my Buddy? We’ll be best friends until the very end! I love you more than you will ever know…I will never…let you go…
CHILD’S PLAY (2019) was directed by Lars Klevberg and stars Aubrey Plaza, Mark Hamill, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, and is about a mom giving her 13-year-old son a Buddi doll for his birthday. Now this doll has it all; it can control your WiFi, thermostat, TV, everything. It’s the best personal digital assistant a kid could ask for! The unfortunate part…this one is a bit different…a little more sinister…
So let me start by saying I am not a purist of the Child’s Play/Chucky franchise of films. I think they’re all pretty good to mediocre. The first one is a classic to me, but in no way, is it a masterpiece. The sequels are kind of hit or miss for me, with my favorites being the Bride/Curse/Cult of Chucky sequels (see Charlotte’s love letter to Curse of Chucky HERE). But this one kind of surprised me. It’s not exactly a reboot, more a re-imagining of a classic character and in no way, does it take anything away from Don Mancini’s world. So, when I saw all the hate this vision of the classic character was getting online, it only made me more and more excited to see it. First chance I got, I pre-ordered my tickets for a Thursday night showing and…well let’s get into it.
The bad things about this film, I felt, was for starters the look of the doll. It’s really goofy, but then again, so was the original Chucky design (which looked like a demonic Cabbage Patch Kid…) There were some moments in the film that kind of slowed things down, which for some viewers could take them completely out of the picture. There were some really cool kid actors in this movie, but it looked like they were thrown in there because that was the cliché these days in horror (see: IT, Stranger Things), basically put a bunch of kids in danger and have them be the heroes, and you get people in the seats. For some films it works, this one I felt it was okay, but didn’t really need to be there.
As for the good parts, Mark Hamill completely steals the show as the voice of Chucky. He’s downright disturbing in this movie with the way he says certain things and the cinematography was great the way they filmed Chucky. The original film was pretty straight forward, but this time around Chucky isn’t cracking one-liners and making bad jokes, he’s downright crazy…pushing our hero, Andy (Gabriel Bateman) to his psychological limits at times. And can we talk about Gabriel Bateman for a moment? Where did this kid come from, cause he’s great as Andy! His relationship with his mom (Aubrey Plaza) was believable, but felt a little forced at times. The music is great! Bear McCreary’s soundtrack is out of this world awesome. The kills and conventional effects were just gnarly, I was not expecting that much gore out of a Chucky movie, and Chucky and the other dolls were actually all animatronic which is a huge bonus for me!
I had a blast watching this movie. I’m glad this re-imagining didn’t steal anything away from the original franchise, and actually made people want to go back and watch those films. The performances were great, the kills were awesome, the movie is fun and light despite being slightly more serious than the originals, and Chucky was downright creepy! I highly recommend everyone check this film out, it’s in theaters now.
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