With Reboots being all the rage nowadays, it wasn’t surprising to hear that the cult classic Child’s Play franchise was getting remade. The films are known for the foul-mouthed murderous doll “Chucky” going on killing sprees through the city of Chicago. This Child’s Play reboot sees the doll in a more modern, technologically advanced environment. While there is some underlying criticism of society’s reliance on technology here, it isn’t really what viewers are there for. Overall, the reimagining loses a lot of what made the first films so great.
New Child’s Play Doesn’t Do the Originals Justice
Chucky’s New Look
It isn’t long before the first red flag in the movie is revealed – Chucky’s new look. It isn’t good. In the original Child’s Play, Chucky is obviously ugly. He doesn’t look like something that a kid would want to play with. But he at least looks murderous and creepy.
This incarnation keeps the whole repulsive look but loses the murderous image. It just doesn’t work. The doll is supposed to be all the rage with kids, with everyone wanting one. It has all the most modern technology, allowing it to do things like connect to kid’s phones and televisions. Yet, they couldn’t make it look any better than it does? In fact, the first one is probably more appealing for kids to play with.
His looks could have been helped if the doll had a sort of transformation throughout the movie, as he got more and more murderous. Giving that almost-chiseled face, some scratches from Andy’s cat would even have been enough. Instead, all we get are its blue eyes turning red. Yawn.
Laughing at Them, Not With Them
Viewers are hardly given time to get over the weird look of the doll when they are introduced to its new voice. Now, it is extremely difficult to say anything negative about the living legend that is Mark Hamill, who voices Chucky. Having said that, Chucky’s voice is terribly weak. Hamill likely voiced him exactly as the directors envisioned, it just didn’t work.
On the surface, it makes sense to go the childlike route. This version of the film moves away from the original canon in which Chucky is born from having the soul of a serial killer transferred over to a doll. Instead, Chucky is just a soulless machine who had his “safety features removed.” So, from a creative standpoint, it makes sense for him to have a harmless sounding voice that would be appealing to children.
But what this results in is Chucky just sounding comical, and not in a good way. When Chucky started singing the “Buddi Song,” it was so cringy that it wouldn’t be surprising if some viewers just walked out right there. Sure, the originals had their comedic moments, but this time it seems like viewers are more laughing at the movie, rather than with it.
Didn’t Go Far Enough
To its credit, there were some brutal murders that would have fit right in with the originals. However, overall, the movie just felt like it didn’t go far enough. The best line that Chucky could come up with was “Heads up bitch.” He seemed so much tamer than he could have been.
Slasher films are known for their (many times pointless) sex scenes. With the main character Andy’s mom being so young (she said she had him at 16) it seemed like a setup. Some viewers probably expected her boy-toy to be killed while “in the act.” This never happened.
In a time when movies are getting increasingly more graphic, one of the titles that pushed the boundaries back then could have gone a lot further with its remake.
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