To countdown to this year’s Halloween, Luke Owen reviews a different horror film every day of October. Up next; Curse of Chucky…
Warning: This review does contain spoilers. For a non-spoiler review, click here.
After the sad state on show that the world decided to call Seed of Chucky, the serial killer Good Guy doll was put on the shelf where he would remain for nearly a decade. Rumours of a reboot banded around the Internet as did the idea of a Freddy vs. Jason style showdown between Chucky and Leprechaun, but nothing ever came to fruition.
In a sea of 80s slasher movie remakes, it seemed that Child’s Play would be the next one for the chopping block. However, Don Mancini did what many other slasher franchises should have done – created a movie that continued the story of Chucky on a small budget and released straight to DVD and Blu-Ray for the fans.
Curse of Chucky is the new life that Charles Lee Ray needed.
A remake of the first film, like a lot of the slasher movie remakes, would have been pointless as there is no other story to tell with this character other than continuing his adventures. You couldn’t play or “improve” the ‘who’s the killer card’ as we all know who Chucky is and what he’s about – just in the same way that it was a waste of time trying to trick an audience into thinking that Freddy Krueger was wrongly hunted by the parents of Elm Street. Mancini instead made the genius move of creating a film that Child’s Play fans have been requesting for years – a genuinely scary Chucky movie.
After the comedy turns of Bride and Seed of Chucky, it’s so much fun to see Charles Lee Ray treated with a certain amount of dignity to create an eerie movie with some decent scares, a great atmosphere and an intriguing dynamic between Chucky and lead character Nica. It’s not the greatest slasher since A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Child’s Play 3.
However one of the biggest issues of the movie, from a hardcore horror fan at least, is Mancini’s desperate attempts to tie Curse of Chucky into the movie’s mythology. It’s quite difficult to work out were Curse of Chucky sits in the timeline, but we can assume it’s after the third movie due to the Jennifer Tilly cameo – who would have been in her doll form had the movie been set after Bride of Chucky. But this raises the question of how Chucky ended up in her possession cut to ribbons after hitting the fan in Child’s Play 3 in the 1998 movie. Furthermore, if she had been sending him off to people’s houses all these years, why did she wait until Bride of Chucky to try and marry him? On top of that, the final moments with Alex Vincent throw up even more questions on why Tiffany didn’t send Chucky to his house first seeing as though Andy is technically still the only person he can transfer his soul into.
It feels as though Mancini forgot he was making a horror movie and decided to focus on fan service instead.
Regardless of its continuity issues, Curse of Chucky is a great entry in the franchise. Over the last 5 days we’ve discussed how it could possibly be the best of the series and, on retrospective reflection, it probably is. Child’s Play 2 is a great slasher movie, but Curse of Chucky nails the atmosphere and it gets the balance of horror and the goofy nature of the series perfectly. When you think about it, it’s incredible to think this is from the same director as Seed of Chucky.
Amazing what happens when you don’t try and be a wacky self-aware comedy isn’t it?
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published October 21, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
