Child’s Play
Categories: Halloween Reviews, Movie Reviews
Written By: Eric Jensen
Rating: 
When notorious murderer Charles Lee Ray is killed in a shootout with police, he invokes some voodoo magic to enable him to transcend death and blah blah blah, the point is: Killer doll. Even on its release in 1988 Child’s Play, which became the first in an ever-increasing number of sequels, was not a new idea. We all remember “Talking Tina” from The Twilight Zone and countless other examples of the “inanimate object come to life to kill us” genre. But despite a less than innovative premise, Child’s Play is an enjoyable and fairly effective horror film. People have sort of forgotten the ways that this first filim in the series succeeded as, with each passing sequel, killer doll Chucky has become more and more of a wisecracking one-liner machine obsessed with puppet sex and less an actual menace. We have to remember, then, that this was before audiences had preconceived notions about Chucky, and long before he got married and started a family.
Chucky fits into the second-tier of horror film villains. For whatever reason, the top strata is occupied by Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street films and Jason from the Friday the 13th sequels and just beneath them come a crop of others including Chucky, Michael Meyers (Halloween), Pinhead (Hellraiser) and Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre). Though he’s not one of the genre’s absolute top stars, he nevertheless makes—at least in this movie—an interesting and at times genuinely scary villain.
The specifics of the story aren’t particularly important; they never are in a slasher film. Essentially, a killer has sworn revenge on the people who brought about his death and, to that end, used some serious black juju to transfer his soul into a Good Guys doll. A young boy named Andy, whose obsession with having a Good Guy doll is so extreme you’d think it was a Cabbage Patch Kid, Tickle Me Elmo and Playstation 3 put together, is the unfortunate soul who owns the possessed devil doll. And, since he’s cripplingly stupid as children so often are, he enables Chucky to go about his murderous rampage and allows himself to become a complete patsy in the process. When will children learn that they can’t be slaves to the foul-mouthed rantings of their demonic toys? It’s a mistake they make all too often.
But this movie can’t be scary, you’re no doubt protesting. It’s just a doll and doll’s aren’t scary! Well, shut up and die, because you’re wrong. Because looking too much at a murderous figurine could become laughable rather than frightening, we don’t see Chucky in action on-screen much until near the end of th picture, and this helps immeasurably to build the suspense. That what you don’t see is scarier is well known to just about everyone, and the director utilized that principle to great effect here. Furthermore, low angle, skittery doll-POV shots as Chucky runs here and there lend a creepy, unsettling feel to the proceedings. Even the fact that “it’s just a doll” helps rather than hinders the movie. For a sizable portion of the story, Chucky has explicitly revealed his true nature to young Andy and no one else—not even the audience. Since police and parents are not inclined to believe the kid’s wild stories about an ambulatory, bloodthirsty toy, the movie plays with the idea that perhaps Andy is the one committing these atrocities and his attribution of his actions to Chucky is symptomatic of his growing insanity. It makes for a more intriguing and cerebral plot than you might expect from a slasher movie about a spooky doll.
The cast, too, helps this movie excel. The boy playing Andy is just as cute as a bug’s ear. Catherine Hicks—whom you may know as the mom from Seventh Heaven and are required by law to recognize as Captain Kirk’s love interest in Star Trek IV—does a convincing job of playing Andy’s mother, realistically portraying the fear she feels at the idea that maybe her son is batshit insane. Her terror in the film’s climax, when Chucky is rampaging through her apartment with malicious intent, is always believable, and that’s of critical importance. If even for a second the audience stops buying that she’s afraid, we’ll start having those “it’s just a doll” thoughts. Hicks takes us beyond such considerations expertly, easing our suspension of disbelief. And of course there’s Brad Dourif, appearing early in the film as Charles Lee Ray and then voicing Chucky throughout the rest. Dourif is forever being cast as extremely unusual and quirky characters (recall Billy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings) because he rises to the occasion like none other. He takes extremely difficult roles and makes them come alive in memorable fashion, offbeat and odd but never cheesy. He’s exactly what Chucky needed.
So I most definitely recommend this picture. If you’re only familiar with Chucky’s later appearances, it’s important you go back to the source and see what he was like before he became increasingly absurd with every new movie. You might be surprised by how enjoyable it is, enjoyable in a completely unironic fashion. Plus there’s an awesome scene where Chucky uses a voodoo doll to bust up a guy’s legs, and you definitely won’t want to miss that.
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