Movie title: Child’s play (2019)
Release Date: 2019
Type of movie: Horror
MPAA Rating: R
Our rating: 3/10
Re-watchability: 1/10
I seldom like re-makes of classic 80’s horror movies. For example, they re-made Halloween in 2007. At first, I felt well ok I will give it a chance. I mean, how bad could a Halloween re-make be anyway, right? I ended up walking out of the theater where Halloween was being shown and would not see it again until 7 years later. No, not because it was that scary, but because of how bad it was. Well trust me, there was even more to dislike about this re-make of Child’s Play. I agree that re-making classic movies has a long history in Hollywood. There are even some re-makes that are highly successful at the box office, and which go on and do well in Blu Ray and DVD sales. Normally, that happens when the studio in charge fully understands the reason for the success of the original movie and how to improve on the storyline when planning the re-make. Trust me when I say, Child’s Play will not be one of these re-make success stories.
Let me start with the storyline, and what has changed about it from the original Child’s Play movie. The original, with its self-aware, murderous doll, scared the bejesus out of me. Anyone with any sense likely disposed of any dolls that could talk, walk, move or wet their pants once they saw that movie. In this re-made version we have Chucky as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) doll created by the Buddi company. It is unclear, but somehow Chucky has learned to kill in creative ways from the internet. Why? Because a programmer at the Buddi company was fired from his job and apparently decided as an act of revenge would program one doll to be really, really bad. Yeah, so why just one bad doll? I mean if the goal is to get even with the company for firing him, why not make “all the dolls” bad, right? Concern over his job reference? Plausible deniability? It was never clear.
In the original Child’s Play, Chucky is a doll made by the Good Guy’s company who has the soul of Serial Killer Charles Lee Ray placed inside him when Charles is dying in a shoot-out with the police department. Prior to dying, Charles Lee Ray uses voodoo to transplant his soul into a Good Guy doll. It was clear why only one doll would have his murderous soul. Unless he knew the same dark arts as Voldemort, he pretty much had to go with a one-off soul transplant.
It wasn’t just the fact only one doll was affected when the evil could have been so easily distributed more widely. The whole re-make felt like it had a disconnected story line. It seemed the film maker and the writers of the re-make wanted to make a film that was as different from the original as possible, so they created a unique and re-imagined story line to set it apart from the original film. A horror film with a supposedly updated storyline for a new generation of horror fans. If that was their plan, they failed miserably.
Now that you have the backdrop to both stories clarified, let me describe how I felt this re-make stacked up to the original with regard to other aspects of the plot. What I liked and what I didn’t like about it. The whole idea of an AI doll going on a weird and murderous killing spree was just lame. The thought running through my head the whole time is (upload a virus into his AI programming) and end his sorry, miserable life. We all know AI is not sophisticated enough to protect itself from malware these days. If you have an easy solution to the horror, the show is never going to make you afraid of dolls or even to sleep after seeing a movie like this. The original Child’s Play made me terrified of dolls as I explained in my Annabelle Comes Home review. Transplanted soul, indestructible doll, nothing stops it. An AI doll, by contrast, well it’s just a glitch away from shutting down permanently. If software even gets too warm the software doesn’t work properly. So, this re-make of Child’s Play felt rushed and driven by a need to try and capitalize on the re-make craze in Hollywood right now without paying any attention to the importance of details in the storyline. I also felt that Mark Hamill, while he is a fantastic actor and I’ve enjoyed seeing him in the Star Wars franchise as Luke Skywalker, brought nothing suspenseful as Chucky. In fact, a voice I associate with “hope” is kind of the antithesis of a voice for “pure evil”. James Earl Jones (Darth Vader voice) would have been a better type cast. Meanwhile, Brad Douriff, who has voiced Chucky up until this re-make of Child’s Play, was not offered the role of Chucky in the re-make and has said he would have turned it down anyway. His voice, well you can’t but help associate it with pure evil.
The original writers of Child’s Play did not return to write or direct this re-make as they are currently planning either a TV show or a separate movie featuring Brad Douriff as Chucky. This re-make of Child’s Play started with a bad concept and managed to go downhill from there. About the only scare I felt was when the directors threw in a sudden death. Hardly the kind of thing that keeps you up at night, or worse, afraid to even fall asleep. When the movie doesn’t deliver any fear numbing fright or nightmare ridden dreams, it really doesn’t qualify as much of a “horror show”.
Moving on to the doll that was used in this film, and how it compares to the original doll in Child’s Play. This new doll doesn’t operate on batteries like the original Good Guy doll did or should I say should have operated. Who needs batteries to operate when your force comes from an evil soul? This new doll learns from the internet and is an AI doll so it’s ability to learn and retain information is limitless. Neither doll looks very terrifying when you first see them. However, it’s all in the way that the actors, directors and writers use the dolls to scare us and make us terrified of dolls. This movie focused on an AI enhanced Chucky. This was meant to be scarier because this Chucky could learn things and know things about people that it shouldn’t. That could have been used to greater advantage here.
The original doll in Child’s Play was scary because I knew his motives, wanting to transplant his serial killer soul into that of a little boy. The re-make seems to fall flat with the doll wanting to be friends with the little boy. That’s it. This AI Chucky really can’t download its AI into the boy’s brain. So this Chucky just goes around killing and slashing up anyone and anything that gets ins his way, or anyone or anything that he sees as a threat to his continued relationship with Andy, the main character and hero of the movie. So, in the original you have pure evil attempting to spread to a new host. In this movie you have evil just being evil, not the most novel concept for a horror film.
In closing, I would like to point out that I did have high hopes for this film to be able to surpass my expectations, and it most certainly failed spectacularly. I would not recommend this movie for others as I found it not even the slightest bit terrifying. In fact, the 3 out of 10 rating I gave it seems generous by my standards. I go to these movies because I enjoy horror and enjoy being so scared, I must sleep with my lights on after a show. But after this movie, I could have slept in a dark cave with unknown noises peacefully. It falls severely flat of doing anything approaching horror. About the best it achieved was a little unexpected scare here or there. I left the theater going, did I just watch a horror movie, or did I just watch a Science Fiction movie about a killer doll? Don’t get me wrong, the movies that blend Science Fiction with evil well are fantastic shows, but this was not one of them. Frankly, I would not recommend watching this one in theaters or even renting it at Red Box. In all honesty, I wish that I could forget ever having wasted 2 hours of my time seeing it. Being a review site though, I live to review things, so you don’t have too. I hope you enjoyed this review, and please do stop by in the comments and tell me what you think.
Thank you for reading,
Jason
