Child’s play 2019 is the latest horror film to get a remake. Even though the original franchise created by  Don Mancini, is still going strong with Blu ray releases in an upcoming TV show.
We have a new 2019 version of this story with an Edu kid who curses a lot and his mom who gets him a buddy doll. And this body doll is smart. Not in the way he was in the original film, where he was inhabited by the ghost of a murderer.
But as an electronic device, you can interact with your home your TV all electronic appliances inside your house. And he is designed to be a kid’s best friend. But of course, as you might expect, this one has some serious issues.
We get this out of the way really quickly. I by no means I’m like a Chucky purist or anything. If you’ve seen my review of the original film you know that I think it’s a fun movie.
I don’t consider it like some horror classic. The character Chucky is iconic, especially for that era. But it’s in the field all the kills people. I mean it’s not like the shining your Halloween or evil dead 2 were anything.
It’s by no means a classic and yet it is a very fine an enduring horror film. And it was a little strange to me that they were doing a remake because the actual franchise with  Don Mancini senior behind it is still going fairly strong.
I actually liked the curse of Chucky, but throwing all that aside and judging this film purely on its merits. It’s enjoyable. It feels like a throwback. It has a very fun vibe to it. There’s a lot of very gory deaths, which I didn’t anticipate.
It makes good use of the R. rating and it knows what it is. It’s very light-hearted. It’s very tongue in cheek and it understands how silly it is. And it by no means is trying to be a serious film, which is really refreshing.
Because I was afraid it was going to get a dark and gritty reboot of Chucky. Gratefully, they understand that a doll killing people it is funny. And they find ways to make it enjoyable.
The performances, for the most part, are very good. The young actor Gabriel Bateman has a lot on his shoulders. And he delivers Aubrey Plaza is great as his mother. I thought that their relationship was the best in the film.
In regards to characterization, it was fairly well fleshed out. Even though it was kind of conventional, she has a boyfriend kid doesn’t like the boyfriend creates tension. There wasn’t anything new there.
But I bought them as a mother and son relationship. Brian Tyree Henry plays a detective, who is often at his mother’s house. Who lives right next to the main family and so he got a lot of the jokes in the movie.
And I thought the dynamic between him and his mother as well. That was one of the better parts of the movie. Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky, is excellent. Which is really surprising.
Because Brad Dorothea so synonymous with this character, but he is really good. when it comes to voice work, it’s pretty hard to get better than Mark Hamill. I mean he’s already done so many iconic characters and he once again delivers as Chucky.
But still the film felt very disposable to me and a lot of this is because characterization is very weak all around. There some neighborhood kids and they all basically are cliche. They’re sort of the weird one.
There is the bully and they all sort of fit into those perfect cliches that you expect out of the neighborhood kids. And never really understand anything about them. So when people start inevitably dying, they just feel like kill scenes.
There’s no investment involved and so it’s just like watch Truckee kill people. Which can be fun and is fun. There’s some good use of build-up and tension. But not quite enough of that.
Because even though this movie is really silly and it knows that. In the original child’s play, they did a better job of setting up Chucky as a character. And that’s probably because an actual person is haunting Chucky in the original.
Whereas here he’s an electronic device, that’s malfunctioning and so there’s not really a soul for the movie it’s just watchably entertaining. And so I guess if you were afraid this movie was going to be a disaster. That’s probably really for you hear.
The look of Chucky I really don’t like it. I think he looks terrible. He reminds me of that old show terra hawks. Those marionette puppets that were so terrifying. Which is probably the type of unsettling reaction they were hoping for.
But I just found myself laughing a lot at his expressions and I am positive the going to become a bunch of gifs and memes in the future. Like there’s one scene in particular, where the kid sits down and asks Chucky to make as many weird creepy faces as he can. And you just watch Chucky’s face contort for like 30 seconds.
And I understand that that scene is supposed to be funny, but having it so early on in the movie made me not be able to unsee that throughout the rest of it. And I just don’t understand why this is happening so much in these franchise films.
When you have an iconic character, that everybody likes and knows, the sonic the hedgehog trailer had I’m looking like a bad blue squash. And now this, it’s like no one was complaining about the look of Chucky.
He’s looked the same since the eighties, everyone likes that. Why do you have to change it?. It just I get the idea of differentiating yourself from the original. I just don’t like the way it looks plain and simple.
I just don’t like the way it looks. Still, this was better than I thought it was going to be. The performances are for the most part strong. And it has a fun eighties vibe that recaptures that feeling.
Still, that’s in a sense a bit of an issue because some of those fine eighties movies really wear disposable. A lot of them. Like you can watch them and feel nostalgic and you can remember those better times maybe.
But then you kind of think more about the many realized that they were actually a little bit throw away. And this movie feels like that. But to be honest I was entertained for the most part in this film. I certainly didn’t hate sitting in the theater.
Mark Hamill is great as the voice of Chucky and I feel like this isn’t going to offend any Chucky purists. If you can get over the design, you’ll probably enjoy yourself.
I am going to give Child’s Play a B-minus.
Guys, thank you so much as always for reading the review of Child’s Play 2019. look forward to more reviews very soon. See you soon with another movie review.
