‘Child’s Play’: Even Aubrey Plaza Can’t Save This Botched Reboot

The new Child’s Play isn’t exactly deep (despite its attempts at commentary about our computer-obsessed lives), and it does drag a bit in places – but when it works it works, and by the end of its 90 minute runtime you feel sufficiently entertained.

Looking at the entire scope of his history on the big screen, Chucky has a very different legacy than basically any other horror icon. In most cases, particularly with characters created in the 1970s and 1980s, the pattern has maintained that while the villains/killers/monsters are eternally held in high esteem as powerful nightmare-inducers, their movies on the whole typically aren’t all that great. For cinema’s favorite murderous doll, however, the exact opposite has long been true.

Particularly because of his diminutive stature, and in spite of his intensely bloody past, Chucky has been written off by many movie-goers as one of the sillier horror icons… and yet he is one of the few kings of the genre that has a franchise stacked with mostly quality material. Child’s Play 3 isn’t very good, and both Bride Of Chucky and Seed Of Chucky require a certain amount of audience leniency given their tonal choices, but still the serial killer-possessed toy has a better batting average overall than, say, Freddy, Jason, or Michael.

This legacy has allowed Chucky to be a consistent pop culture presence for decades, his path guided by the hand of creator Don Mancini – but now things are changing a bit in 2019. Without Mancini’s input, a reboot of Child’s Play has been created, and in doing so the story and central villain have been updated to reflect our current technology/smart home-obsessed world. And while this may sound like epically bad development strategy, here’s the killer surprise: it’s actually pretty damn fun and entertaining.

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