Curse of Chucky Review




CURSE OF CHUCKY

Curse of ChuckyIn the initial trilogy of Child's Play films (’88, ’90, ’91) Lakeshore Strangler Charles Lee Ray, also known as Chucky, is killed by a cop chasing him down, but not before he is able to speak a voodoo incantation that transfers his soul into the body of a Good Guy doll.

Andy Barclay is the young kid that gets the doll as a present from his mother after she buys it from a street peddler. Chucky goes on a killing spree, taking out his old partner Eddie Caputo, who left him at the scene of the crime where he was shot, and Dr Death, the voodoo master that taught him how to use the dark arts.

Once he’s carried out these killings he is soon trying to transfer his soul to the boy to escape the confines of his plastic body. However Andy has a few tricks of his own and Chucky is burnt alive and shot to pieces.

But you never can keep a good guy down and Chucky returned for two sequels with Chucky reborn and following Andy, first into foster care and second to military school, suffering the fate of being melted in a Good Guy factory and finally getting sliced and diced by the blades of a fairground ride.

Then came the comedy double shot of Bride of Chucky (’98) and Seed of Chucky ’04). Both movies were self referential, continuously winking at the audience, but funny and inventive, taking Chucky in a different direction. Bride and Seed were fast, furious and fun. Tiffany, Chucky’s bride dragged the murderous Good Guy doll into the new millennium - asking him - “Is that knife superglued to your hand?” before telling him to be more inventive in his killings.

Bride and Seed had a lot more humour and inventive killings than the previous films, no doubt, in part at least, due to the self referential films of the 90s such as the Scream and Final Destination films. They felt a little silly at times, removed from the original trilogy, less tense, less scary based in comedy as opposed to horror, but they were good fun.

By the time Bride and Seed were released we were familiar with the character of Chucky. We knew he was a killer, who favoured brutal stabbings or asphyxiation - “There’s nothing like an asphyxiation to get the circulation going” - and we knew from the beginning of the films what to expect. The introduction of Jennifer Tilly playing Tiffany allowed for a lot of interplay between the two that we hadn't really experienced before. Chucky had someone to talk to, to bounce ideas off and to be more human. Rather than staying in the shadows and creeping up on his victims he was more out in the open. There was little build up in the films as we already knew what to expect, which gave us several films with Chucky as a leading character.

So a decade after Seed and a full quarter century after the original Child's Play film what has writer/director Don Mancini got in store for us with Curse of Chucky? He's reinvented Chucky over the years keeping core fans happy whilst also winning new fans, can he do the same again?

Curse is the first in the series to go straight to DVD, meaning that Chucky didn't get a chance to scare us in theatres and take in box office cash. It never seems positive when a film misses out on a theatrical run. But a small budget (of just $9m - the same budget as the original ’88 movie) and a static location would appear to count against the film from the outset. Chucky doesn't speak for the opening 45 minutes, which is roughly half the film. Mancini has decided to build the tension and give us a slow burn horror film. This is great if you are watching a Chucky film for the first time. It's fine if you know nothing about Chucky. But as one of cinema’s best known big serial killers - he’s just as big, if not bigger than Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, it’s hard to suspend disbelief at the fact that he’s unknown to us.

So what exactly is Curse? The direction is good and the build up to the point where Chucky is fully revealed is impressive, in terms of tension, although as Chucky is not in the first half of the film for more than a few moments it does drag somewhat. As for the tone of the film, it certainly doesn't feel like a straight sequel (a 6th film in the series) and there are several plot points that suggest it's not. It's not a prequel, although there are certain elements of a prequel incorporated into the movie. It feels as though it might fit into the franchise after the initial trilogy of films most appropriately, but again there are certain plot points that suggest this isn't exactly possible either. It certainly has elements of a re-boot or re-imagining and in many ways it is, but as it refers, at points, to each of the preceding films from the series it can't be. What we can hope is that it is the beginning of a new series of Chucky films and that the studio will put more faith and budget into any new films. Chucky is a fantastic character.

As for the look of Chucky. He looks fantastic. He looks much more like the original Good Guy doll to begin with but with slightly more menacing facial features which is both impressive bit also slightly off target in terms of the Chucky that we know and love. But his appearance does change somewhat throughout the film to give him a more classic Chucky look, which I really liked.

I think Chucky is really a horror icon. A bad guy that you really can root for and love to hate. But I don't hate him. Often I want him to kill his victims. Don't we all? The characters in Curse are so bland and/or unlikable that you'll want Chucky to kill them. Which brings us to the cast. The young girl who admittedly doesn't feature much towards the end. She's the best actor on show. And cute as can be, as well as having a genuine resemblance to Alex Vincent's young Andy Barclay. Fiona Douriff is good as the wheelchair-bound Nica. But the rest of the cast are plain as can be, filling in by the numbers, there’s nothing special about them.

The odd thing about Curse is that the personality of Chucky has been changed. He’s always been a sociopath, killing people that irritated him, or people who he thought had done him wrong. But in Curse, Chucky has become an psychopath, killing in a far more mean-spirited and evil way. This is incongruous with his character in the previous films and Curse is sadly, a slightly, less likable film because of it.

There are a couple of 'false' endings which are slightly confusing but you should be sure to watch right to the end of the credits for the ultimate pay-off.

So where does Chucky go from here? He’s been killed at the end of every film and it’s probably not going too far to tell you that he also, pretty much, certainly dies at the end of Curse. But as we know you can’t keep a Good Guy and although “dying is a bitch”, he’ll always come back.

I certainly hope that Chucky will be back. I think Curse can make enough revenue to make another film financially viable and I believe that Mancini has probably got several ideas of where to take Chucky next. It'd be a little bit odd to have made Curse if the producers were not intending to revive the series. Bride and Seed tied up the franchise well enough to be an ending in themselves if Mancini had decided to retire his Good Guy. However Curse is somewhat of a re-birth for Chucky so I’m expecting that we will see more from him in the future.

Author : Kevin Stanley