This Child’s Play is the reboot of the long running franchise, ignoring every movie to update the mythos to fit modern times (the original is from 1988). Instead of a serial killer transferring his soul to a doll, this Chucky comes to life because of a disgruntled factory worker. When he’s yelled at by his boss for not working fast enough, he turns off all of the safety and behavior protocols of the high-tech doll before it’s packaged up. The original Good Guy Doll was like Teddy Ruxpin, it only spoke a few sentences. Here, the doll is called Buddi and is a connected device built by a huge conglomerate. It can talk and control a slew of other products and has the processing power and AI capability to learn and better interact with its owner. When 13-year-old Andy is gifted the doll by his mom, the AI begins to learn the wrong lessons from the other kids in Andy’s apartment complex. The priority for Buddi dolls is to become best friends with its owner and Chucky takes it a step further, becoming Andy’s protector by killing people it thinks are threats.

M3GAN, which came out 2 years later and did much better at the box office, is more or less the same movie. Child’s Play is rated R, unlike M3GAN, so Chucky sticks to the old-school horror and on-screen killing roots.

While this reboot changes the origins of Chucky, it sticks closely to the original themes and viewpoints. Andy is the new kid in the neighborhood and is isolated and lonesome because of it (single child with only his mom). Getting Chucky is really cool–it’s the hot toy of the year until the new version is released–and Andy makes some friends because of it. When Chucky starts getting aggressive, Andy does his best to get a handle on it. When it gets worse, it turns into paranoia and even greater isolation because no adult believes that the toy is dangerous, not him. As Chucky kills more, the guilt and panic escalate.

I think this take is 50% successful in revitalizing the movie series because it keeps much of what works so well in the series and does enough to keep it fresh. Today, tech going wild is more believable than a voodoo spell. It looks very good, most of the SFX are excellent, and the cast and suspense are good too. The kills are also sufficiently creative and gory for the franchise.

There are a few problems that are hard to overlook. This tech approach does take away all of Chucky’s personality. It’s a robot. You can hear the servos working as the doll moves its limbs and turns its head to look at people. It has a blank expression as it ‘thinks.’ In the other films (and the terrific show), Chucky is Charles Lee Ray, a psychopath hiding in a doll. When sitting still, he has the perfect camouflage as a doll. A ticking bomb that no one knows is there. The body has become bone and flesh on the inside. When he moves, his face becomes much more animated and expressive. That’s absent in this movie. The scary factor of a sinister person setting up traps to kill those in his way to transfer his soul into Andy is gone. That’s a fate worse than death for Andy. That notion of human intelligence and deceit is missing from the villain as is Andy’s body and soul being taken over to become a killer. It’s less scary.

While the movie is well-directed and does look very good, two things about the production bother me. The big one is Chucky’s redesign. The Good Guy was designed to look similar to Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. A round cherub face with freckles and a mop of red hair. He’s cute, something kids would want to pick up and play with. For some reason, they sculpted the face to look like Gary Busey. This doll that is supposed to appeal to kids looks like an old man with jowls. I don’t understand how anyone approved it. The cheek lines around the mouth aren’t round, they’re divots that look like they were molded from the side of a dirt road. The face looks weathered so it never looks friendly. No kid would ever want it.

The series has always had the problem of switching from what is obviously an actual doll being carried around/sitting on a chair/lying still to an animated puppet. The face is clearly different between the two as the detail, size, and shape are different (we won’t get into the jarring moments when a person that is too tall is used as a stand-in because making a puppet run and not look ridiculous is damn near impossible). I’ve always assumed that it’s because the animatronics wouldn’t fit into the size of the doll head so changes were necessary (especially in the ’80s-’90s). In this movie, that change never happens from doll/puppet/CGI Chucky so at least he looks consistent. But gad zooks is he always ugly. And oddly enough, the facial animation isn’t that good either. The puppetry on the Chucky TV show is also better.

Finally, the lighting can get so gaudy that it makes the backgrounds look fake. It is so theatrical like a stage play, that any realism gets ruined. There are times when everyday environments, like the back of a store, look like a club in Ibiza. Why are there so many different colored spotlights all over the place? I was getting flashbacks to the lens flares in JJ Abram’s Star Trek movie it’s so distracting.

I do admire the effort that went into this reboot. I think they really tried to re-ground Child’s Play and some of it does work out well. The problem is that the Child’s Play movies that are done by creator Don Mancini are so good because it’s a specific continuous world of escalating madness that doesn’t take itself seriously. I have no idea how Mancini consistently comes up with the wild story ideas that actually work. Each entry starting with Bride of Chucky are fresh and entertaining movies that build on the premise of the original. And he’s continued that love with the Chucky TV show. There’s no reason to settle for a so-so Chucky.