Child's Play (2019)

A remake of Child's Play?!  The internet was quick to hate on the idea, and I was pretty skeptical as well especially upon hearing the early plot rumors of them going with a high tech Chucky doll.  But I'm very pleased with the result, because the movie is a total surprise to me and love the new direction they went with.  As a remake it does a shit job, but it's really good because it does its own thing and does it well!

She's as shocked as me that this is actually pretty good

So I'm sure most have seen the trailers or read the previews online that talk about how they went with a high tech killer robot Chucky doll in this remake.  Fans were quick to hate the idea that Chucky was just going to be some piece of hardware gone haywire, which did sound lame at first, but the movie makes it work.  No longer a Good Guy doll, they are called Buddi dolls.  The whole concept is essentially a satire of Google and other connected services but replaced with the fictional company named Kaslan.  Kaslan is a mega corp that powers almost everyone's smart devices, and the Buddi doll is one of their new big products that isn't just a toy, but a functional friend and assistant.  So to help make a Buddi useful, they learn from their owners and help them out with being able to directly connect to and control other Kaslan controlled devices.  We all see where this is going.   Child's Play is a bit of a satire on the current connected world, with super cheesy Kaslan commercials and everyone's daily lives seem to depend on their connected devices.  It's almost like Robocop levels of consumer satire and there is clear subtext with how Buddi learns.  Buddi's are similar similar to children who copy what they see what's on TV and the adults around them.  This leads to our Chucky learning to love violence.  It's all pretty blatant but feels like it's done on purpose for comedy sake.

Maybe we should return it

So Chucky is a doll whose programming is tampered with early on.  Being sophisticated AI, they have all kinds of safeguards in place but we see why Chucky ends up being different before getting shipped off from the factory floor in Vietnam to the local Zed Mart in America!  The movie moves at a brisk pace to which I greatly appreciate.  We are quickly introduced to all the characters all while  getting an overview of the setting with Kaslan and the Buddi dolls.  The movie is very efficient on it's use of runtime and doesn't suffer from the slow starts most horror films have.  Aubrey Plaza plays the mom to this version of Andy Barclay, and shes great in the role as she also plays cool mom who has attitude and no problem being vulgar in front of her kid.  Andy is also older in this version of Child's Play, even making a comment on how he's too old for a Buddi doll in protest.  But at the the insistence of his mom, Andy keeps his new pal around.  Andy is a more realistic kid in this film, who swears and jokes with his new friends he meets in his apartment building.  The camaraderie of the kids in this movie is closer to that of Stranger Things and the recent IT remake, where you feel like the dialogue seems more natural and not forced kid scripting.  It's great to not have the painfully naive child characters we dealt with in the first 3 Child's Play films.

I'll give you 3 wood for 1 sheep

Andy and his new pal Chucky become good friends in a series of almost Spielberg like interactions.  While it is cute and even very funny at times, there is a constant menace present as we all know something is wrong with Chucky.  Unlike the original where we know Chucky is possessed by a serial killer, this new take has us watch as Chucky gradually evolves.  He may be smart, but he's also a simple AI who learns by observing the world around him and it causes him to do things in the wrong way.  You almost feel bad for Chucky for a second or two cause he's almost child like.  The movie is filled with a whole lot of funny moments which was a big surprise as well.  Even when the horror kicks in, they like to keep it light and funny.  Not to say that this movie isn't serious, because it is.  When the violence kicks in, the movie doesn't skimp on the gore.  There is an almost weird innocence to this doll which makes it nice and creepy, also providing some funny dark moments as well.  Now is this Child's Play scary?  Not really, it's more of a fun and fast paced slasher that also depends a little on jump scares. The movie doesn't play with people and hide the doll, or a slow build up to the killer doll's reveal to the characters.  You clearly know and see that it's Chucky who starts killing in the defense of his best pal Andy and even our lead character is very much aware of whats happening early on.  Mark Hamill is great as Chucky, and at first I was worried he was just gonna do more of his Joker voice that so many of his characters do, but he really does give Chucky a new voice that is all his own.  I love Brad Dourif as Chucky and was sad to not see him return, but Mark does a good job filling in those tiny shoes.

KILL MODE ACTIVATE

The one fault I do have with the movie does relate to it's fast pace.  While it is nice that the movie moves briskly, the film does feel like it had a lot of footage cut out.  Scenes jump from one to the next rapidly and often abruptly.  It feels like a whole bunch of the scenes were cut or trimmed to keep it moving quickly.  The movie never bores you but it does feel a bit sloppy with how it mows through the scenes.  My other critique has to do with how Chucky looks.  The new design is just incredibly ugly.  The movements of this new Chucky are also really stiff, but I can imagine the reason being is that this Chucky is supposed to be a robot and not a living person in a Doll.  Even when Chucky becomes more alive, he is still very much a robot.  This is a big difference in style from the originals where we had some amazing puppetry and animatronic work bring the original Chucky to life.  There is a fair bit of CG use also which does stand out and not in a good way.  But these are nitpicks as I do see why they made the changes they did.  The plot itself is pretty silly of course with Chucky going into a killer rage and rampage where he uses other connected Kaslan products to help him kill.  This is a smart Chucky, he doesn't have to get his hands dirty as he can command the world around him to help slaughter those who might be competition for Andy's affection.

This movie took me by surprise as I went in expecting to hate it.  Part of the hate was with how they made this without any of the original team involved.  Don Mancini, Dourif, and company still are doing original Chucky films and despite hating Seed of Chucky, I've mostly enjoyed them all.  I loved the return to serious films they did with Curse and Cult of Chucky especially.  Now the good news is that apparently Mancini and friends are planning to keep doing their thing with the franchise, while this new Child's Play is going to be a potential divergent franchise.  This movie could have easily been named something else as it's barely a remake and feels like a completely unrelated movie outside of the similarities in the doll.  So if you are worried about it pissing on the original, don't be as it does stand on it's own.  I enjoyed this one and wouldn't mind seeing it continue as a franchise.  If you were on the fence about the remake, I really think you should give it a chance!