Wanna play? - 'Child's Play' vs 'Child's Play'
When the first 'Child's Play' hit the screens in 1988; we were first introduced to Chucky; the little killing machine in the shape of a lovable doll. The child protagonist Andy Barclay receives the doll as a gift, who eventually reveals himself as a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray trapped in the body of the doll and hoping to take over the body of Andy to continue his spree.
The original film took a fairly stoic stance on the killings, Chucky was rarely actually observed moving or running around, or even killing for that matter. The chilling energy he exuded was mostly through suggestion, perhaps adding to the scare factor and effectiveness of the film as a whole. The lack of animation of Chucky for most of the runtime made the viewer wonder if it really was Chucky committing these crimes, or had young Andy Barclay just gone on a mad killing spree himself.
Of course, it is revealed in all animated and puppeted glory that it really was Chucky all along, and by the end, he is on a mission to keep killing. Thus, followed another onslaught of sequel after sequel, with Chucky becoming more ridiculous and lewd as they progressed. By 'Seed of Chucky', which was the final instalment of the original five movies, Chucky is merely a caricature of the one we met in 'Child's Play' (1988) and the films are nothing more than slasher, spoof films akin to 'Leprechaun' (1993).
Despite two further horrific sequels that followed 'Seed of Chucky' which we are going to pretend (wish) did not exist, Hollywood decided we needed a total reboot of the series in the form of 'Child's Play' (2019).
'Child's Play' (2019) took the original concept that worked relatively well in the 1988 classic and decided to put a camera and laser eyes into Chucky, as if he wasn't scary enough, he could now control the technology around him and probably had Bluetooth. So, did adding a modern circuit board to the Chucky doll really help reboot the series? Not really.
As a whole, the brand new version of the film is entertaining, capturing some of the shock and satire that the original did so well. However, there was nothing notably new about Charles Lee Ray. The same predictable kills occurred, he said the same shock-inducing things and the new 'Andy' may as well have been a less interesting clone of the first one. The reboot added almost nothing to the series except a modern twist on the doll, but people weren't there to be scared of the dangers of technology, they were there to be scared of their favourite knife-wielding tiny psychopath.
I don't think even a Jennifer Tilly cameo could resurrect this one, it's probably time to binge the original five films again.
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