Saturday, July 27, 2019

(2019) Child's Play - A Rather Disappointing Remake of the Infamous Scary Evil Chucky Franchise

This is the second movie that my wife and I were still playing catch up. It was quite fortunate for us as the movie still played in the theater nearest to our home so it was not a lot of hassle. Despite being a horror movie, my wife was still intrigued to see this one since she had seen the original movie (and several of its franchise). Well to cut the story short, let us get into the details now.

Brief Story Line

Andy (Gabriel Bateman - Lights Out, Benji etc) was the son of a single mother named Karen (Aubrey Plaza - Legion TV series, Ingrid Goes West etc) who worked at a retail store. When one of the high tech dolls called Buddi which was produced by Kaslan enterprise led by Henry Kaslan (Tim Matheson - Hart of Dixie TV series etc) was returned as a defect product, Karen decided to bring it home and give it to Andy for him to play.


However, this doll was not like any others as it did not have the normal restrictions they should. It referred to himself as Chucky (voiced by Mark Hamill - Star Wars series etc) and wanted to "keep Andy for himself". Things started to get dangerous for everyone around Andy when Chucky decided to do unimaginable things which also arouse the attention of Andy's neighbor Detective Mike (Brian Tyree Henry - Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, Widows etc).

So what would happen to Andy and Chucky? Find them all in this horror movie.

End of Brief Story Line

OK, I originally have high hopes about this movie, especially since my wife and I quite enjoyed the various movies in Chucky franchise. But this turned out to be a rather disappointment. The Chucky here was not as scary as he was in the previous movies. We felt that his face was not frightening enough. Yes he was still creepy at times, but it was not up to the level of us feeling scared of him.

The thing that we noticed was the movie's tone sometimes felt more like a comedy as there were little bit of humor here and there that made us laughed a bit. Now I could not remember if I laughed in the previous Chucky series but in here we could even laugh out loud once or twice. Which made me wonder if that was the original intention of the movie maker to make it lighter, but for us it made the movie seemed out of focus of its supposed main attraction, i.e. Chucky's eeriness.

Another thing that did not help was the face of Chucky in this remake which as I said above was not hair rising enough. Back in the days, the Chucky we remembered would have a scary devilish grin and laughs. Now I do not have any complains about Mark Hamill voicing his character as he did provide some eerie moment especially when he sang that The Buddi song, but it felt a bit different from what I hope. The rest of the cast played their parts adequately, but my favorite characters were Detective Mike and Andy's friend Falyn (Beatrice Kitsos). Oh and good luck on getting rid of that song from your head, especially if you stayed long enough during the closing credits while listening to the song (it stayed in our heads even after we got home). FYI, no mid or post end credit scene here.

However, the things done by Chucky were still gruesome as ever. It's just not as many as I would have hoped for. And personally I thought the time it took for Chucky to become at his worst (or I should say "his best") was too long, leaving too little time to show us those "good stuff" we came for. Oh btw, we saw this movie together with my wife's niece who joined us at the last minute. As a millennial, her views of the film was very bad and she thought a lot of them were illogical especially the climax part (which I also felt not that satisfying).

As a horror movie this one provide little frightening moments. And I think there was at least one gruesome scene that was cut by the Indonesian censorship body, so if your expectation was to see lots of violence gore stuff, seeing this in the theater would not satisfy you. One thing that should be applauded was the movie makers attempt in recreating this franchise in a modern way (it was smart of making it link to the more up to date's technology), but it could also backfire for fans of the original like me and my wife who thought that might be the factor which made this Chucky not that scary.

Overall this was not one of my favorite remake. It failed to live up to my personal expectation on the horror part. The humorous part was OK, but it made the tone a bit inconsistent to my liking. Plus I also believed Chucky's face need a bit of a redo to make him as creepy as he was before. From what I read in the Internet, this movie was not thrashed by critics but audiences did not really enjoy it (it even has the lowest scoring in all of Chucky's franchise). So it would appear we were not the only people not that entertained by the film.

If you are fans of the original Chucky, you could give this a try, but whether you could enjoy it, would depend on how open you are with the changes. But if you are not a fan or have not seen the previous Chucky films, you could certainly see this one, though if my wife's niece's thoughts are any indication, it would not be that likable as well. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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