When Chucky, a chirpy red-haired doll possessed by the dead soul of a
cold-blooded killer, was introduced in the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, I’ll bet no one would’ve
guessed he’d be around for at least 25 years, let alone spawn a franchise that
would last six films. Yet here we are. That first film is surprisingly
entertaining and holds up well. The doll scampers about in a darkly funny,
genuinely scary movie that builds up to one of the greatest pre-kill one-liners
of the 80s, or any decade for that matter. (Having it spoken by a darling
little kid, his hand defiantly holding the match that’ll hopefully light the
killing flame, is a definite plus.) With clear inspiration from the plethora of
slasher pictures floating around at the time, the movie manages to make Chucky scary
in two ways. First, there’s the creeping terror of a supposedly inanimate object
that slips away when your back is turned. Secondly, there’s the placid, safe,
kid-friendly plastic face that suddenly screws itself into a wrinkled grimace
as the killer’s personality bursts through, the cold rubbery lips spouting
hurtful, violent, vulgar intensity with a chilling vocal performance by Brad
Dourif.
The movies that followed tried to duplicate the mix of
scarily silly kills, largely missing what made Child’s Play such an unexpected blast. The franchise’s next best
idea came when Chucky got a girlfriend, Tiffany, an equally psychotic person
played by Jennifer Tilly who, you guessed it, ended up stuck in a doll body of
her own. Now they’re homicidal partners in what becomes the only killer doll
romance that I can think of. Like so many 80s slasher villains, Chucky started
out pure evil and ended up somewhere closer to the role of protagonist,
creating the kind of icky cognitive dissonance wherein an audience starts to
root for the killer simply because he’s our only recurring character, the most
charismatic known quantity on screen, and the only reason the plot moves at
all.
It wasn’t until 2004’s Seed
of Chucky, the fifth in the series, that a notable movie bubbled up out of
the formula. It’s a movie that’s difficult to recommend, but hard to ignore,
busting down every known category and sitting confidently in several boxes at
once. To call the movie outside the box is to assume writer-director Don
Mancini (making his directorial debut after having written the entire franchise
to date) is aware that there is a box at all. I have admiration for Seed, which finds Chucky and Tiffany in
Hollywood and devotes most of the runtime to the dolls terrorizing Jennifer Tilly
(playing herself as well as voicing Tiffany). It’s a slasher movie, a showbiz
satire, and a fearlessly tasteless gross-out comedy. Besides, any movie that
steers into territory so bonkers and meta while still finding time for a
subplot involving kinky cult filmmaker John Waters playing an amused paparazzo
can’t be all bad.
Now, nearly a decade later, Don Mancini is back wearing the
writer-director’s hats for Curse of
Chucky. The sixth in the Child’s Play
series, and the first to go direct to video, Curse begins when a woman (Chantal Quesnelle) and her
twenty-something wheelchair-bound daughter (Fiona Dourif) receive a mysterious
package in the mail. It’s a Chucky doll, something vaguely remembered from the
80s. Neither of them ordered it, but there’s no time to ponder the mystery. The
mother falls from their second floor balcony and dies that very night. In the
wake of this tragedy, the girl’s older sister (Danielle Bisutti), with husband (Brennan
Elliott), daughter (Summer H. Howell), and nanny (Maitland McConnell) in tow,
show up at the house, marking time before the funeral mourning, reconnecting,
and arguing about what to do next. Their minds are so otherwise taxed,
there’s scarcely time to wonder why that Chucky doll keeps going missing and
turning up in the strangest spots.
The movie is stuck in a limited space, barely stepping foot
outside the house for the duration. We’re with a small number of characters
over a short period of time, the stakes escalating slowly but surely over a
trim runtime. That’s a sign of the budget and DTV status for sure, but Mancini
is resourceful, getting great shadows and ominous creaks out of the big old
house in the country. It’s the scariest of the series since the first one,
effectively building up jumps and kills, grabbing a few genuine chills along
the way. It turns out there are still some good scares left in Chucky. For
once, he’s used sparingly, although as the plot goes on he gets chattier and Mancini
can’t help but pull in the franchise’s laborious narrative history. It’s better
than your average fan service, though. Cleverly thought through, Curse is respectful of what’s come
before. As one with affection for the
series, I found it pleasing enough. I doubt the movie’s winning over any new
converts, but it’s a solid treat, rewarding long-held interest in the
material.
Fiona Dourif makes a most sympathetic protagonist, while her
father, returning once again as the voice of Chucky, slips easily into the
little creep’s brusquely singsong tones. Mancini stages a couple clever
switcheroos of scripting, a few fun sequences – an early highlight is a sort of
Russian roulette chili dinner, the audience aware that one bowl has been spiked
with poison, but unaware who has received it – and some creative gore. By the end I was growing a little tired of the
sometimes-predictable horror hack and slash, but it’s ultimately diverting
enough. It’s all a bit of a throwback, less exploitative than you’d think (for
good and ill, come to think of it) and easily the least overtly goofy (again, for good and ill) the
series has been in quite some time. It’s a fitting entry in this long running
series and a fine mid-October surprise.
Note: For some reason,
this October sees only one wide release horror film. Why Curse of Chucky didn’t get the bump to theatrical release, I
don’t know. It’s bankrolled by a major studio – Universal – and seems modestly
budgeted without appearing cheap. Surely it would’ve been worth the chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment