In short: Cult of Chucky (2017)

After the events of Curse of Chucky, surviving heroine Nica (Fiona Dourif) has been shipped off into an institution for the criminally insane. Supposedly, she is responsible for all the deaths in that movie actually committed by everyone’s favourite living murder doll Chucky (as always voiced by Brad Dourif). Clearly, we are not in a CSI show. By now, Nica’s creepy psychiatrist Dr. Foley (Michael Therriault) has her convinced there was indeed no living doll involved in the murders, and that she’s totally bonkers. As a reward for that “insight”, Foley brings Nica to a less strict institution.

Of course, Chucky is very real indeed, and uses the opportunity to make Nica’s life miserable again. Also involved are good old Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), Chucky’s wife and murder-partner Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), various caricatures of the mentally ill, and a new trick Chucky has learned. Let’s just say the film might as well have been called Army of Chucky.

To be able to enjoy the newest of Don Mancini’s Child’s Play/Chucky movies, the interested viewer needs to be clear about one thing: this is not a movie at all interested in even pretending to take place in the real world. So psychiatric clinics do not work even the tiniest bit like they do in the real world, mental illnesses only have the vaguest connection to any you’d find around here, not to speak of security measures or rescue plans.

If you’re able to get over that – I certainly am – you just might find a lot here to enjoy. Mancini mostly manages to create a mood of proper weirdness, interspersed with quite a few good suspense sequences and bunch of sardonic bloody murders. The pacing is a little off sometimes, particularly when it comes to the scenes with Andy which turn out to be too much build-up to a whole lot of nothing, but there’s always something pleasantly bizarre, outrageous and fun just waiting around the corner of the next scene. Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly and their excellent doll bodies are as always a macabre joy, while Fiona Dourif manages to give the whole affair at least some grounding in relatable humanity in what’s a bit of an ultimate straight woman performance, as the supposedly mad (mad!, I tell you) woman who is actually the only sane person in the whole of the film, an irony she and Mancini’s script obviously realize.


This is fun horror of a right now somewhat old-fashioned style that neither properly fits into the realm of slow horror (I’ll call it “post-horror” only if I’m getting paid for that) nor the ultra-calculated house of horrors style of the The Conjuring films and their ilk; despite being the hundredth film in a franchise, this a curiously individual film.

In short: Curse of Chucky (2013)

One of the more peculiar facts in horror films is that the Child's Play/Chucky movies are one of the most consistent franchises in the genre. In quality, at least, the films never tend to disappoint, though they don't reach the quality of the very best entries of the more variable series. But then there aren't that many horror films on a level with the original Halloween. I suspect the main reason for their consistency is that the movies are still written (and in this case directed) by Chucky-creator Don Mancini, and not by some hired hand who couldn't give a damn.

After diving as deeply into the meta humour rabbit hole as possible in the last two movies, the newest Chucky film plays out rather more seriously and tightly, the still sardonic sense of humour this time around standing in service of what mostly is a tight, old-fashioned horror film taking for the most part place during the course of a single night and in a single place. That set-up is most probably just a way to cope with a limited budget, but, as good writers and directors tend to do, Mancini turns the flaw into a virtue and goes all unity of time and place on us, finding joy in perfectly executed old thriller tropes. In fact, the film's only weakness is the coda after the actual plot has run its course and the story of the movie is placed in the Chucky mythology (apparently, all of the films before are supposed to haven taken place in the same world, which leads to questions the film at hand can't even begin to answer) in a way that makes as much sense as anything but that is neither very interesting nor actually seems to belong into the highly focused rest of the film.

That rest, or rather main course, of the film, is very effective for its part, demonstrating what happens when you let a killer doll loose on a dysfunctional family (with Fiona Dourif as an excellent wheelchair bound and ill final girl). A priest is killed, other people are also killed of course, a few expectations are subverted, and Chucky quotes Nietzsche. It's all in a day's work in killer doll land, and it's a rather good day.

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