Child’s Play

Chucky has been repack­aged for the app gen­er­a­tion. Where the flame-haired toy ter­ror from direc­tor Tom Hol­land and writer/​creator Don Mancini’s orig­i­nal 1988 slash­er acquired its homi­ci­dal ten­den­cies through super­nat­ur­al means, this time it’s the sur­pris­ing result of a labour dis­pute in a Viet­namese sweat­shop, where ​‘Bud­di’ dolls are being mass pro­duced for the Amer­i­can mar­ket. That’s right, the real evil here is ram­pant West­ern con­sumerism – although if the film has a stab at being a self-aware cap­i­tal­ist satire, in truth it’s far more effec­tive as a gris­ly homage to its B‑movie forebears.

In Lars Klevberg’s Child’s Play, the lit­tlest hell-rais­er is remod­elled as a cloud-based vir­tu­al assis­tant, WiFi enabled and ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with all Kaslan™ smart home appli­ances. Instead of being pos­sessed by the spir­it of a ser­i­al killer, this ver­sion of Chucky (as the doll dubs itself, weird­ly) has had its AI chip super­charged and its safe­ty set­tings dis­abled. Think Alexa with a blood­lust. Ini­tial­ly it seems a bit of stretch that a goofy-look­ing humanoid gad­get dressed in dun­ga­rees could become the lat­est must-have house­hold acces­so­ry, but by allud­ing to the real-world gam­i­fi­ca­tion of con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy Tyler Bur­ton Smith’s script goes some way to explain­ing the Bud­di phenomenon.

For Aubrey Plaza’s sin­gle moth­er Karen, the doll presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­nect with her son, Andy (Gabriel Bate­man), who has tak­en a dis­lik­ing to her new boyfriend, Shane (David Lewis). Appro­pri­ate­ly for a film about a young boy befriend­ing a diminu­tive being of strange ori­gin, Bate­man bears a resem­blance to Hen­ry Thomas of E.T. fame. And in a fur­ther nod to Steven Spielberg’s clas­sic sci-fi adven­ture, the tip of Chucky’s index fin­ger lights up when­ev­er he is shown sync­ing up to anoth­er elec­tron­ic device – typ­i­cal­ly in order to wreak hav­oc on any­one who threat­ens to come between him and Andy.

While the body count is rel­a­tive­ly low for this fran­chise, the death scenes are inven­tive and enter­tain­ing­ly grue­some. Yet if the film earns its R‑rating with aplomb, it ben­e­fits from not pil­ing on the schlock and gore, allow­ing Andy’s (and Chucky’s) sto­ry plen­ty of breath­ing space with­in its tight 88-minute run­time. In anoth­er smart cast­ing move, Mark Hamill is amus­ing­ly malev­o­lent as the voice of Chucky – none more so than when singing Bear McCreary’s creepy theme song. On the down­side, Atlanta star Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry is slight­ly wast­ed as the neigh­bourly detec­tive who comes to Andy and Karen’s aid late on. But this is still a cut above your aver­age hor­ror reboot.