Review Tuesday: CHUCKY!

Upon returning from NOLA last year, where the wife dressed as Chucky, she wanted to go back and revisit all those old horror movies. I was, at first against it, as I remembered they generally revolved around a child, and I hate movies with child stars in them. But I relented because it would make the wife happy, and I was curious how they stood the test of time. You can find my reviews of the CHILD'S PLAY movies HERE. With little research I found out that they kept making additional installments for this franchise up to and beyond the recent reboot (reviewed HERE) So, with that, here are the rest of the CHUCKY movies. 

BRIDE OF CHUCKY

1998

Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly) brings Chucky back to life. 

Apparently Chucky had a girlfriend who was so in love with him that she spent the last ten years tracking down the remains of the doll so she could bring him back to life. Of course one thing leads to another and Chucky ends up killing her and trapping her soul inside another doll. The rest of the movie is their adventure as they force a young couple to drive them to New Jersey, where his body is buried with a special amulet that would enable them to jump into human bodies again. 

The movie was filmed fairly well and the cast was pretty good. What was annoying was how Tiffany kept insisting that is was the nineties and they had to be more original with their methods of murder. Some of the puppetry was greatly improved, while other aspects were still poor. For example, they attempted to make the dolls more emotive, but it just didn't come off that way. The Tiffany doll was just annoying to look at and Tilly's idea of acting is bad enough, but when you aren't distracted by her shape, you realize how truly annoying she really is. 

 

I remember I actually took Mrs. Bax0jayz to the theater to see this back when it came out. I don't remember what I thought of it back then, but I know I am disappointed, at best, with it now. 

 

SEED OF CHUCKY

2004

The spawn of two possessed, murderous dolls tries to figure out its own identity. 

At the end of BRIDE OF CHUCKY, Tiffany gave birth to a blood-thirsty baby doll. How do two dolls have a baby and where did it get a soul??? Well, you should never think about horror too much, since the writers never seem to. So we start with the creepiest doll yet. The story was that some dude found the living doll in a graveyard in NJ and brought it home to the UK. He named it "Shitface" and used it as a ventriloquist dummy, which went pretty well since you don't need any ability when the puppet is able to speak on its own. While watching something like Entertainment Tonight and seeing a bit about filming a new Chucky movie, Shitface  realizes who his parents must be and manages to fly from the UK to Hollywood in a sixty year old DC-3. I have NO IDEA why they chose that stock footage. Anyway, Shitface was deliveered to the studio and promptly awoke two completely unrelated animatronic Chucky and Tiffany dolls for the movie, and had nothing to do with the originals. Continuity be damned. Guess what? They come to life and immediately start killing! 

 

The rest of the movie is plenty of murder while the parents argue over whether their child is a boy or a girl, Glenn or Glenda. 

 

Not gonna lie, this movie had one of the most ridiculously complicated plots I have seen in a horror movie. I mean, these things usually run like this: poor saps stumble across blood-thirsty killer(s) and attempt to survive. In this? The dolls hatched some scheme to build a living human family for them all to swap into. 

 

The movie was surprisingly well done. Excellent special effects. The puppetry was really well done. The problems with emoting had been, largely, overcome and the movie seemed pretty well polished. The cast was surprising. It's just that the movie getting turned on its ear AGAIN because Chucky and Tiffany get into another stupid argument seems pretty lazy. The ending, however, is some serious WTF. 

 

CURSE OF CHUCKY

2013

When a family is terrorized after getting a Chucky doll in the mail, a sinister secret is made known. 

After the shit-show that was the previous movie, the studio, apparently, went in a darker and more serious direction. This time they went with the classic horror film formula where the villain wasn't revealed until much later on in the film. In fact, the writing was so good in this installment that it made me wonder if Chucky was even really the bad guy. 

 

But I digress. The movie starts off with wheelchair bound Nica (played by Fiona Dourif, who is the the daughter of Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky!) answering the door and accepting a delivery. Her mother immediately treats her like dirt, and you see this is an underlying theme: the family treats Nica like she's a complete invalid. Shortly thereafter, the mother committed suicide. Then Nica's sister, Barb, her husband, their daughter and their suspiciously hot nanny. That night over dinner, was when everything went nuts. 

 

I must admit, this film truly built suspense better than any of the movies in this entire franchise to this point. The dinner scene had you cringing, waiting to see who would be the next victim. It was actually a huge tease. Kudos on that scene. 

 

The puppetry attained perfection in this movie. Chucky was able to go from innocent to evil in a moment and all in front of the lens. They did, however, retcon the Chucky origin story, at least a little bit. In all, I would say this might have been the best installment in the entire franchise. The child presence was minimized. The scenery was creepy. The story was dark, especially WHY Chucky came for them. The curse of Chucky? He doesn't like to leave ends untied. He was back to finish old business! Be sure to watch for the post-credits scene. It's a bit of a hint of things to come!   

CULT OF CHUCKY

2017

After the events of CURSE OF CHUCKY, Nica is placed in a medium security facility where things start to go wrong, again. 

At the end of CURSE OF CHUCKY the police came into the home to find Nica covered in blood and everyone in the home dead. except for her niece. So they found her guilty by insanity and put her away in an institution. After some time she was found to be less of a threat and placed in a medium security facility. At first it seems like it's for her good, but you learn the quack has his own agenda. But that's neither here nor there. Being placed in another loony bin doesn't exactly help Nica all too much. The others in there are either suspicious of her, or too far gone to be of help at all. So when Chucky DOES show up, and with new tricks under his sleeve, things went south... FAST. 

 

This, by far, was the most polished and well filmed movie in the entire series. But was it was ridiculously dull at the same time. You spend an unGodly amount of time waiting for something, ANYTHING, to happen.

 

Interesting! They brought back the kid who played Andy in the first two movies and he knows how to act now! 

 

Interesting! It's called Cult of Chucky because he learned to possess multiple bodies, human and doll, to do his bidding, building a cult of sorts. 

 

Other than that, this movie seemed to drag out WAY too long as Chucky unveiled his plan and finally finish up the film. This seems to be the link that leads directly to the Chucky television series on SYFY, which came out during October of 2021. 

 

In conclusion, while this movie is the most refined of all the Chucky movies, it's also the most boring since it was more of a TV pilot than a standalone film. At the point that I am writing this I don't know if this movie should be required viewing before seeing the show, but when I look at the cast, I would guess so.  

 

***

 

In conclusion, I consider the CHUCKY franchise a vast wasteland of crap horror. I LOVE horror and didn't like most of these. So why did I watch them? I have a compulsion to finish things I start, so expect to see a review of the series to be forthcoming.