“Hi, I’m Chucky! Wanna play?”
Full disclosure: I put Child’s Play on this year’s lineup mainly to dunk on it. There are a few reasons for this: 1, Chucky is a stupid name; and 2, Chucky is a doll, and I’ve never met a doll whose ass I couldn’t kick. So imagine my surprise/dismay when I realized that Child’s Play is actually kind of fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s not a comedy either. It’s one of the few cult movies I’ve seen that justifies its longevity.
The beginning of Child’s Play is, and there’s no other way to put it, crazy as hell. Detective Mike Norris is chasing a serial killer known as the Strangler (real name Charles Lee Ray). Ray’s accomplice flees in a vehicle, stranding him. Norris follows Ray into a toy store, where he mortally wounds him. Knowing his time is up, Ray grabs the nearest toy, utters a Haitian voodoo incantation, and transfers his soul into the toy. Then the store blows up. We’re about five minutes into this movie. Like I said, crazy. I knew the plot of Child’s Play involved a murderer transferring his soul to a doll, but I didn’t know that voodoo was a part of it.
Soon after all this happens, Karen Barclay needs to get her hands on a Good Guys doll for her son’s birthday. They’re in short supply, but a coworker gives Karen a tip, which is apparently “go out back and buy one from the homeless guy.” Which she does. Everything about this is nuts, and no one bats an eye at any of it. Which kinda rules, if I’m being honest. It feels like there are so many ways to get a possessed doll into a child’s hands, and Child’s Play only chose the craziest paths it could go down. You have to respect it.
So obviously the doll starts killing people, and obviously Karen’s son, Andy, is the prime suspect. That sentence makes sense in the world of Child’s Play, which I’m tempted to compare to The Twilight Zone, but it actually is in The Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll.” Except this movie has more of a sense of humor. It knows that hearing a doll say “Fuck you” in Brad Dourif’s voice is funny. But I wouldn’t exactly label this a horror comedy, because there are some pretty grisly moments as well. Chucky takes a voodoo doll and uses it to torture a man by breaking his limbs, before ultimately killing him by stabbing the doll. It’s a nasty little sequence that sucks the humor out of the film, which is absolutely meant as a compliment.
Brad Dourif was a real coup for this movie. He’s an actor with incredible range, at home in anything from Wise Blood to Deadwood to The Two Towers. He’s able to be funny, sleazy, and menacing all at once. And he clearly has fun playing Chucky; he reprised the role in every Chucky film until last year’s Child’s Play remake, in which Mark Hamill took voiceover duties. Chris Sarandon is solid as Norris, but it’s mostly just nice seeing Sarandon on screen. He never winks at the audience; in fact, no one gives the impression that they’re too good for this killer doll movie. Child’s Play treads a fine line between self-seriousness and parody, and does so ably. This is a genuine horror movie about a doll possessed by a serial killer. It takes itself about as seriously as that sentence can be taken, which it turns out is just the right amount.
And that’s a wrap on 31 Days of Fright! I haven’t successfully completed this column since 2017, so man does it feel good to go the whole stretch. I thought about ranking every film I’ve watched, but that sounded boring. I’ll say the best ones were The Changeling, Train to Busan, and Suspiria (2018). There were no real stinkers this year – nothing on the level of Friday the 13th or Scream 3 – except maybe Verotika, but that’s the kind of bad that you need to see as soon as possible. Let me know if you have any suggestions for next year. And happy Halloween!
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