Child's Play

Child's Play

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Mark Hamill, Brian Tyree Henry

Directed by Lars Klevberg

The Story:
The country is going crazy over its newest craze - the Buddi doll, a doll for children that can also interact with all the technology in their home and essentially make everyone's lives easier.  For store worker Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza), she only deals with Buddi returns as everyone's eagerly awaiting the release of the Buddi 2, while her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) deals with loneliness and not having any friends in their pitiful looking apartment complex.

One day a customer returns a defective Buddi doll (that was tinkered with by a Vietnamese disgruntled worker who turned off all Buddi's safety protocols), and Karen decides to bring it home to surprise Andy as an early birthday present.  When he comes online, Buddi seems a bit defective but Andy still keeps him, naming him Chucky (actually Han Solo, but Buddi heard 'Chucky'), and as the two begin to play together and spend time together, Chucky (Mark Hamill) helps break Andy out of his shell as he begins befriending other kids in the complex.

As Chucky learns about the things that Andy hates, he sets out to eliminate them permanently so Andy won't get hurt again and so they can play.  Andy begins to discover what Chucky is doing, and sets out to destroy the doll once and for all, since none of the adults in his life believes the evil Chucky is capable of - until it's too late.

The Synopsis:
The 80s saw the most iconic horror villains to hit the big screen since the classic Universal monsters.  Names like Michael (granted "Halloween" was released in the late 70s, but he pretty much owned the 80s), Freddy and Jason became synonymous with horror, along with another name - Chucky.  In the original "Child's Play," Chucky was a Good Guy doll who was inhabited by the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, who sought out another human body so he can be born again, and finds young Andy Barclay, and the rest is history.  Throughout the sequels, Chucky goes from being a truly terrifying icon to more of a slapstick comedian, but through it all he maintained his sense of bloodlust and never stopped tracking down a new host body.

What's unique about the "Child's Play" franchise is that each film was directed by the same man - Don Mancini - and the voice of Chucky was always Brad Dourif, until it was announced that a remake was being done in 2019.   Both Mancini and Dourif backed down from the project, and became a new story told by director Lars Klevberg and the vocal talent of Mark Hamill, and while the idea of a remake was ridiculous, the finished project was something different - not a shot-for-shot remake, but rather an updated version of the classic killer doll that would've worked a whole lot better if it was done as a wholly original idea and not tacking on the title of "Chucky."

The idea of technology running amok and turning on humanity is nothing new (as the "Terminator" series can attest), but in 2019 it seems more like reality than science fiction.  We rely on connecting all our technological aids and have pretty much become reliant on them to function at the very base level of life (don't believe me?  See what happens when a blackout occurs and how quickly people lose their minds), so having a movie that centers on a malfunctioning piece of technology that can control pretty much any other technology around it is downright terrifying and all the moreso because it's something that could feasibly happen (at least more feasible than the soul of a killer trapped in a doll).  "Child's Play" would've worked so much better if they didn't try to make the killer technology Chucky, thereby inciting already preconceived memories of those who still beholden to the original (which, to be honest, doesn't really hold up well with age, but is still a sentimental favorite), and probably could've been more successful.

Still, the film did do Chucky a bit of justice with both its physical and vocal presence.  In an age that almost wholly relies on CGI for everything, Chucky was actually an animatronic doll (actually several of them) and was actually well-crafted, even if the finished product made him look a bit silly.  Lars Klevberg could've taken the easy route and made Chucky fully CGI, but instead went back to the classics and made it a live entity.  Along with that, they cast the great Mark Hamill to voice Chucky, which was a wise choice as Hamill has already had great success in vocal work as he's voiced the Joker character in the "Batman" animated films and series for years.  Hamill gives Chucky a different vocal tone than Douriff - more of a seemingly innocent young boy who's learning things as he goes along, rather than the gruff, villainous growl Douriff provided.

The live-action cast also doesn't do bad in their performances.  Aubrey Plaza gives Karen a more modern feel as she's a single mother still, but a hard worker who's street smart and driven, while also loving to her son and yet also falls to the typical stereotype of an adult who never believes her child.  Gabriel Bateman plays Andy differently than the original (mostly due to Andy being older than the 1988 version), as he's still a loner but also has some intelligence to him, and also culminates in a now-standard "Stranger Things" twist as he brings in his friends to help take Chucky down.

When it comes to the story, it's new and re-vitalized, but still maintains the classic demented Chucky nature in his killing.  He doesn't simply stab his victims, but prolongs their pain and misery before delivering the final blow.  It's also different here in that Chucky doesn't want to kill Andy, but rather wants to be his only friend, and takes anyone Andy considers an enemy and kills them for him.  Again, this is a refreshing change of pace for the doll, but again would've been more meaningful if it was a new concept and not tied to the Chucky name - which is essentially the elephant in the room: if it wasn't Chucky, this would've been a groundbreaking look at modern horror, but since it carries the weight of one of cinema's most famous villains, fails to deliver due to preconceived notions by the viewers.

The Summary:
Changing the script from the original, "Child's Play" is an almost wholly new entity where it centers on the dangers of technology through the eyes of a maniacal killer doll, but since comparisons were made to the original, fails to produce something memorable for the right reasons.

The Score: C