Newcomer director, Lars Klevberg brings a new lease of life to everybody’s favourite doll, Chucky, in the 2019 reboot of Child’s Play. The satirical comedy sees Aubrey Plaza as Karen, a young single mum who finds herself with Buddi, a new body camera doll who isn’t quite behaving how he should be, thanks to his ‘appropriate language’ filter being removed by a worker. Buddi, voiced by Mark Hamill, soon starts to go by the name of Chucky, whilst becoming Andy’s (Karen’s son) new best friend.
What’s interesting about this remake is its self awareness of our new found reliability on technology. The movie takes this, perhaps giving a nod to devices such as Alexa, and shows by extreme the vulnerability we put ourselves in by having items such as these in our homes. That aside, the movie is relatively slow for the first half, with little horror and fairly predictable jump-scares.
The second half of the movie does pick up the pace and with that, manages to take the audience by surprise more often than not. Like many horror movies these days, many of the true scares are given away in the trailers, leaving the audience with slight sense of deja vu, rather than a racing heart. The difference here is that the deaths are shown in their graphic true form, with Child’s Play sticking true to its slasher roots.
Whilst most of the cast are given fairly easy roles to play, Hamill once again manages to hit the voice work out of the park. His calm and innocent portrayal adds to the building tension and leaves goosebumps in its wake. Whilst Chucky dolls in the past were manic and evil, Hamill’s constant, almost monotonal Chucky reminds us that this doll is simply a defective piece of technology, which can be even more haunting due to its realism. A killer that has no motives or emotions can cause a lot more damage than one that does. Gabriel Bateman also gives a stellar performance, which is no surprise given the actor’s previous horror roles, including Annabelle (2014) and Lights Out (2016).
Child’s play is somewhat predictable and too slow to really allow itself to submerge into its slasher roots. Nonetheless, with its jump-scares and cult following, perhaps a franchise reboot can allow the doll the chance to shine again.
Child’s Play is out now, distributed by Vertigo Releasing.