The 1988 film \u2014 written by Don Mancini, and directed as more of a grimy, darkly funny thriller by Tom Holland \u2014 centered largely around the adults trying to stop 6-year-old Tommy\u2019s possessed Good Guys doll (voiced by Brad Dourif) from killing everything that comes into its path on the south side of Chicago as it seeks revenge on everyone who wronged him in life. It\u2019s not prestige horror (a term I kind of groan to use), but it\u2019s a serviceable B-movie, and you can\u2019t deny its immense pop-culture impact. It\u2019s also bolstered by strong performances from Chris Sarandon as the non-nonsense cop trying to put an end to the madness, and a pre\u2013<\/span>7th Heaven<\/span><\/i> Catherine Hicks playing Andy\u2019s widowed mother.<\/span><\/p>\n Forget all that, though: This glossy new version completely changes tone and reconfigures Chucky\u2019s origin story and pretends that the various sequels never happened. This time around, the cop character (played by a very funny Bryan Tyree Henry) is given very little to do. Instead, the action is largely centered around Andy (Gabriel Bateman), who is 13 and thus old enough to be a bit embarrassed about being given a Buddi doll for his birthday. He\u2019s lonely, however, having recently moved to a new neighborhood with his mom, Karen (a miscast Aubrey Plaza, who\u2019s given very little to do here), so he ends up enjoying Chucky\u2019s company, even as it begins to glitch out and engage in some pretty disturbing behavior. (The fact that he doesn\u2019t take a baseball bat to it early on remains pretty baffling to this writer.)<\/span><\/p>\n As you might imagine, toy technology has come quite a long way since 1988 (although apparently CGI has not \u2014 the character design is pretty shoddy): Chucky is now able to sync up with and control various household devices thanks to creepy parent company Kaslan. In theory, the Buddi dolls are totally safe thanks to their programming, but this particular doll is on the fritz thanks to a disgruntled worker at its manufacturer\u2019s warehouse in Vietnam. At first, the targets of this Chucky\u2019s rage feel a bit understandable \u2014 Andy\u2019s red-headed would-be stepfather (David Lewis) is an abusive jerk who clearly needs to go \u2014 but as the film goes on, he begins to go after people who in no way don\u2019t deserve it. It\u2019s particularly disturbing to watch Chucky attack Doreen (<\/span>Carlease Burke)<\/span>, the sweet old lady who lives in Andy\u2019s building who just wants to go play bingo with her friends.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the film\u2019s biggest problems is its pacing. The running time (exactly 90 minutes) isn\u2019t all that long \u2014 these days, I\u2019m grateful to filmmakers who keep their projects under two hours \u2014 but the film goes off on so many derivative <\/span>Goonies<\/span><\/i>-aping tangents that you\u2019d be forgiven for checking your watch about two-thirds of the way through. Director Lars Klevberg (see, the direction is uninspired enough that you sort of forget someone had to direct this) and screenwriter Tyler Burton Smith (who to this point seems to have primarily written for video games) have crammed so many extraneous characters (why did Jack Black accept this weird and forgettable cameo role?) and plot threads into the proceedings that it\u2019s hard to care about anyone you see on screen, A.I. or otherwise. There\u2019s something different about Chucky in the new Child\u2019s Play remake. Originally birthed as a very creepy-looking killer doll possessed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":12028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
<\/span><\/p>\nGrade: C<\/span><\/h3>\n
1 hr., 30 min.; rated R for bloody horror violence, and language throughout<\/em><\/h5>\n
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