Film Review — "Child's Play"

My partner is gonna get us killed. I’ve been joking about this for years now. Nearly every gadget in our home is connected by electromagnetism, or something, and can be controlled with our phones, supposedly. I still haven’t figured it out. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, he’s a tech-savvy early adopter, and I’m a Luddite. I mean, I think my highest-tech personal device is a Kindle…

The new Child’s Play both fueled my mock-paranoia and convinced me that I might be right: all my partner’s gizmos are lying in wait—learning our habits and weaknesses—until it’s time to gut us. 

Now, I’m not opposed to remakes. Some of the best horror films of all time are remakes. So long as the new version succeeds at putting a fresh spin on the original material, or takes advantage of the updated setting so as to properly reframe the story for the time, I’m game. And in that regard, the Lars Klevberg-directed Child’s Play warrants its own existence. 

Because this Chucky is different. Quite different. First of all, he’s no longer a Good Guy doll harboring the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray via a Haitian Voodoo spell. Instead, he’s a robotic Buddi doll whose Asimovian safety features have been disabled, which is particularly troubling considering Chucky’s new breadth of abilities.

You see, a Buddi is what you could call a smartdoll. Once optimized, a Buddi has access to every other Kaslan-made product via “The Cloud,” a real-life concept as vague to me as it is explained in the movie. So basically… security cameras, roombas, thermostats, gardening equipment, motor vehicles, etc., are all now part of Chucky’s shiny kit of murder tools—but let’s be honest: roombas have always been homicidal. 

Rest assured, though. Chucky still wields a knife in 2019. A blade is a timeless weapon, after all. Classic, you might say. But how he learns that knives can be used for bloodshed, and not just making sandwiches, is pretty rad. Because Chucky processes information visually, apparently. So, a casual viewing of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 proves very formative, since he starts mimicking what he sees almost immediately. (Who cares that the TCM 2 clips are out of order, right?)

Brings to mind that age-old line from the great philosopher Billy Loomis, who once posed the notion, “Movies don’t create psychos—movies make psychos more creative!” So did Leatherface make Chucky a killer, or did he merely spice up Chucky’s eventual killing spree? You could say he always lacked empathy, and he does show disregard for an animal’s wellbeing pretty early on. Those are signs, I think. So maybe that Southern slasher just simply gave a reengineered toy some tips on how to be even eviler…

Which reminds me of what this movie is ultimately about… Chucky is fiendish and heartless, yes—but no more so than the corporation that assembled him. This whole bloodbath starts because of abusive conditions at a factory in Asia. An underpaid, overworked, and rightfully pissed off employee—fed up with his shitty work environment and his asshole supervisor—retaliates by purposefully deactivating a Buddi’s (Chucky’s) safeguards—then takes his own life.

Essentially, if the Kaslan company had bothered to provide their employees with a few very reasonable things—namely: a living wage, air conditioning, good hours, breaks, healthcare, and a little concept called kindness—Chucky would’ve ended up an everyday, murder-free birthday present and everyone would still be alive. But, no, Kaslan’s coldness and cruelty begot a modern-day monster instead. 

Thus, the real villain here is not Chucky—it’s capitalism. Furthermore, it’s rampant consumerism that grants Chucky his new powers. Because things are like Pokemon—gotta have ’em all. And owning every device imaginable, all connected via Wi-Fi magic, has a nasty way of working against you once a malicious force with unfettered access to it all sets out to kill you with those very tools that were supposed to make your life easier and safer.

Pretty cool concept. Wouldn’t be the first time it’s ever been explored, but it’s appropriate to this story and provides a nice spin on the property. Can’t help but wonder, though, how Don Mancini would’ve played with such an idea, not that he was ever going in that direction. But his dark humor was sorely missing from this rendition. (I don’t think I laughed once…) Also, this version lacks queerness, something I’ve come to love about the franchise as I’ve gotten older. 

You know what, although the new Child’s Play succeeds at being something else and not just a carbon copy of its original… maybe it should’ve in fact just been something else… A new property about smartdolls rising up and causing mayhem. Remember when killer toy movies were all the rage? Let’s bring that back.