I watched seven Child's Play movies this year
…is not a sentence I ever expected to write, but here we are.
I don't remember exactly what set me off, but I picked the first Child's Play movie as a Halloween movie in October and just went with it in the following months. And, surprisingly or not, I liked all of them on some level. They're all around very fun movies that found their own identity as they went on, changing but remaining consistent under Don Mancini's supervision.
Child's Play 1 & 2 are pretty effective slasher movies with some well-made kills and a human part that actually really works. I'm a big fan of 2 in particular, but both have characters you care about, which I hear isn't a recurrent thing in slashers (I don't really watch slashers). Most importantly, they're super goofy when they need to, as well. Brad Dourif, God bless him, goes all out with the swearing as he voices Chucky, and they shoot and throw that puppet all around, which never ceases to make me chuckle. I laugh my ass off with all those movies at some point, which to me is not a sign of disrespect, but that the filmmakers managed to create something extremely amusing to me.
That's really the constant thing in all these 7 movies, Chucky is always fun to watch and the kills tend to be as well. Even in the more bland sequels, there's always something bringing that energy back, and you gotta credit both the actor doing the voice and the puppet, animatronic, and effects work. Kevin Yagher, Tony Gardner, and their respective teams do wonders in those movies, even when the puppet itself looks kinda ass.
Child's Play 3 is one of those cases where the movie in general is not that good, kinda more of the same, generic slasher sequel, but in the end there's a very fun sequence inside a carnival where Chucky gets his face cut off by a reaper's scythe that's part of a rollercoaster decoration. So can you really say it's bad?
After that the series got dormant for a while and returned in the late-90s with Bride of Chucky, then Seed of Chucky, which lean 100% towards the horror comedy angle. These two happen to be my favorites. Really campy, really unhinged stuff particularly on Seed, which is that one notorious for having actual LGBT themes, somehow. Glen/Glenda is great and really just the icing on the cake of an absolutely deranged movie.
That's the point where all the movies started being directed by Don Mancini, and you can tell he really likes this series and is making an effort to push things forward. You could make 1000 generic sequels that follow 3's formula, but no, he's actively trying. He's trying with Chucky, and I respect that so much.
Anyway, then the 2010's saw Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky, which are probably the worst ones? But after getting to this point I can't really hate any of those movies. Both were made direct to video, and they do, in fact, look extremely DTV, very cheap-looking and not in an endearing way. Still, Mancini knows what he's doing and gets some good-looking, creative shots in. Curse is, once again, the generic slasher formula, but well-executed IMO, and Cult should be more fun on paper but it just isn't… until the last 30 minutes that more than make up for a somewhat bland movie. I won't spoil anything, but, as I said, there's always something bringing that energy back, and this time I've got to give credit to Fiona Dourif as well. She is extremely good.
Now I still have a remake and a TV show to watch. Don't know when I'll do that, if ever, but I hope Don Mancini keeps making these, he clearly cares and is giving his all. Even with a canceled TV series, surely streaming must have a place for more Child's Play, right?