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Countdown to Halloween – Seed of Chucky (2004)

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To countdown to this year’s Halloween, Luke Owen reviews a different horror film every day of October. Up next; Seed of Chucky…


With Curse of Chucky being released tomorrow (read my review here), Countdown to Halloween will be looking at everyone’s fourth or fifth favourite slasher villain: Charles Lee Ray aka Chucky.


Call it jumping the shark, call it nuking the fridge, call it whatever you want – Seed of Chucky was one step too far for the Child’s Play franchise and would effectively put it to sleep for nearly a decade.

Throughout this recap of the series, we’ve yet to discuss the father of the franchise and figurehead of Chucky as a character – Don Mancini. Unlike Sean S. Cunningham, John Carpenter or Wes Craven, Mancini has been there every step of the way with his creation to make sure it was sticking with his vision. While he was usually resigned to the writer/producer role for previous movies, Seed of Chucky was the first chance for him to step into the director’s chair to make a movie that is farcical, stupid and not at all funny.

Following the events of the previous movie, Chucky and Tiffany have now become props used on the set of a movie based around their supposed killings. They are then resurrected by the product of them not practicing safe puppet sex – their son/daughter, Glen/Glenda (a reference to the Ed Wood “classic”). Yes, Chucky and Tiffany have had a non-gender specific child. This leads to them displaying different parenting tactics – Chucky wants him to take on the family business while Tiffany uses him/her as an excuse to go straight and become a mother. All the while, the pair are still trying to get out of their doll bodies and plan to use Jennifer Tilly (who is starring in their movie) as their way out.

It’s hard to know where to begin with Seed of Chucky – and not in a good way like Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Much like Bride of Chucky, one of the movie’s issues is the ham-fisted and poorly handled self-aware comedy which is predominantly the movie’s focus – the biggest of which being that the movie’s main star is Jennifer Tilly, who also provides the voice of Tiffany. Unlike Bride of Chucky however, Seed of Chucky ignores all attempts at making a horror movie and focuses solely on broad comedy which really falls flat. Seed of Chucky simply isn’t funny.

As a series, Child’s Play has always been easy to laugh at due to the wackiness of the main character. Even Child’s Play 2 (which is arguably the best attempt to make him scary pre-Curse of Chucky) has its moments in which the character is utterly ridiculous and hard to take seriously, but it at least attempted to bring some horror out of him. The problem is that as soon as you highlight that something is painful and stupid, it just becomes painful and stupid. The more you point out the laughable antagonist, the less funny the movie becomes because it feels like it’s trying too hard. Again, Mancini missed the point of what made Scream such a success.


During the Q&A session after the screening of Curse of Chucky at this year’s FrightFest, Manicni said that he loved the character of Glen/Glenda and would love to do more with him – but it’s really hard to see why. Aside from being a beyond-stupid addition to the series, he/she is incredibly annoying, very grating and simply a detriment to the movie. So much focus is placed upon him/her and how his/her presence effects Chucky and Tiffany’s parenting skills that Seed of Chucky loses focus on what made the series good and what people wanted to see from it. Glen/Glenda took the series in a direction it really didn’t need to head.

There is a reason why the Child’s Play franchise was left dormant for nearly 10 years: Seed of Chucky sucked and it killed the series deader than Chucky’s victims. It is a failure on an almost spectacular level with dreadful performances from Tilly and Redman, awful self-aware humour and a hell-spawn of annoying at the highest of levels. Bride of Chucky was very goofy, but it was at least watchable. Seed of Chucky is just hard to sit through.

But all is not lost, as Don Mancini would return to the director’s chair once again for Chucky’s return with the brilliantly fun Curse of Chucky – out on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow. For those who felt let down by the last two entries of the series can rejoice with this latest addition, which we’ll discuss in detail tomorrow.

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 20, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.

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