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#677 - Child's Play
Tom Holland, 1988
A single mother buys her son a talking doll for his birthday, which just so happens to have been possessed by the soul of a dead serial killer.
I guess this review is coming from a difficult place considering how I watched the back half of Child's Play on television at some point in the past year, which would undoubtedly suck a fair bit of tension out of even the best horror movies. Child's Play is definitely not one of the best horror movies, though it's not for a lack of trying. I had liked Holland's attempt to update the classic vampire movie for the 1980s with Fright Night, so I figured that he might be able to wrangle something worthwhile out of the "killer doll" sub-genre. Killer dolls seem to occupy a bit of a no-man's-land when it comes to being horrifying because it is superficially silly compared to other sub-genres yet it still plays on enough genuinely unsettling fears that it's managed to have staying power over the course of decades. Child's Play is pretty straightforward in that regard by having a mortally wounded serial killer (Brad Dourif) uses his knowledge of voodoo in order to channel his soul into the nearest available vessel, which just so happens to be a talking doll. Though the doll is torn out of its box and covered in human blood, it still ends up in the hands of a back-alley peddler who sells it to a single mother (Catherine Hicks) who's desperate to give her young son the right birthday present.
The premise is ridiculous enough that the sequels understandably aimed to play up the inherently comical nature of a foul-mouthed kids' toy with homicidal tendencies. Even now, much of the appeal of the original Child's Play comes from the silliness more so than any actual terror. Of course, this film also falls prey to the same (arguably necessary) flaw as Fright Night in that it spends a lot of time on various people refusing to believe the truth about the supernatural threat until it's too late. Half the film becomes quite the chore as a result, picking up only as Chucky becomes much more open about his violent scheming. The film at least tries to pull a Jaws and capture Chucky's initial antics through first-person shots and brief glimpses, but that does very little compared to scenes where he's seen in full complete with uncanny animatronics and Dourif's snarling voice. There's more fun to be had at seeing Chucky take all sorts of violence on his own more so than inflict it in others, with the effects work at once being decent and also amusing. Unfortunately, that's not enough to really redeem Child's Play as a solid film in its own right.
Tom Holland, 1988
A single mother buys her son a talking doll for his birthday, which just so happens to have been possessed by the soul of a dead serial killer.
I guess this review is coming from a difficult place considering how I watched the back half of Child's Play on television at some point in the past year, which would undoubtedly suck a fair bit of tension out of even the best horror movies. Child's Play is definitely not one of the best horror movies, though it's not for a lack of trying. I had liked Holland's attempt to update the classic vampire movie for the 1980s with Fright Night, so I figured that he might be able to wrangle something worthwhile out of the "killer doll" sub-genre. Killer dolls seem to occupy a bit of a no-man's-land when it comes to being horrifying because it is superficially silly compared to other sub-genres yet it still plays on enough genuinely unsettling fears that it's managed to have staying power over the course of decades. Child's Play is pretty straightforward in that regard by having a mortally wounded serial killer (Brad Dourif) uses his knowledge of voodoo in order to channel his soul into the nearest available vessel, which just so happens to be a talking doll. Though the doll is torn out of its box and covered in human blood, it still ends up in the hands of a back-alley peddler who sells it to a single mother (Catherine Hicks) who's desperate to give her young son the right birthday present.
The premise is ridiculous enough that the sequels understandably aimed to play up the inherently comical nature of a foul-mouthed kids' toy with homicidal tendencies. Even now, much of the appeal of the original Child's Play comes from the silliness more so than any actual terror. Of course, this film also falls prey to the same (arguably necessary) flaw as Fright Night in that it spends a lot of time on various people refusing to believe the truth about the supernatural threat until it's too late. Half the film becomes quite the chore as a result, picking up only as Chucky becomes much more open about his violent scheming. The film at least tries to pull a Jaws and capture Chucky's initial antics through first-person shots and brief glimpses, but that does very little compared to scenes where he's seen in full complete with uncanny animatronics and Dourif's snarling voice. There's more fun to be had at seeing Chucky take all sorts of violence on his own more so than inflict it in others, with the effects work at once being decent and also amusing. Unfortunately, that's not enough to really redeem Child's Play as a solid film in its own right.