Post by blake29 on Aug 26, 2013 16:10:03 GMT -12
CURSE OF CHUCKY (2013)
Reviewed by Dr Karen Oughton (Twitter @drkarenoughton)
The doll is different. The eyes look deeper set and the hair is straightened plastic tat, but Chucky (still voiced by brilliant Brad Dourif) slayed the audience at FrightFest’s world premiere of the unedited director’s cut.
CURSE OF CHUCKY picks up after the other films have finished. We are introduced to Nica (Dourif’s real life daughter, Fiona), a pretty girl trapped in gothic castle of a house owing to her wheelchair and overprotective mom. Out of the blue, a package containing a not-quite cute doll arrives. Queue the carnage, courtesy of the serial-killer-possessed Good Guy toy.
Much of the marketing for CURSE OF CHUCKY would have you believe this is a dark and chilling addition to the Child’s Play series. It’s not quite true and is all the better for it. The tone dives between creepy sections and jump scares that are not too shocking for those less familiar with the series, but it also has one hell of a lot of humor. This is a very, very funny film with everything from verbal jokes on psychiatry to blink-and-you miss it sight gags thrown into the mix. It’s particularly useful as director and creator Don Mancini adds a variation of the final girl theory via Nica, who tries to disregard her disability rather than be the wheelchair-bound burden her snotty sister Barb makes her out as. It adds a nice level of drama to the death scenes that help you to connect to the characters on a more personal basis.
Brad Dourif is the best thing about the film by miles. His comic delivery is absolutely superb and he gives real regret as well as malice to the doll, which is impressive considering he’s mostly made of plastic. Happily, Fiona makes a worthy foil. She’s gutsy but real with it and despite spending a significant amount of the time being what Chucky rightly calls “a whiney *censored*”, she remains highly watchable. You fear for her safety as the chair device (ahem) wheely works. The other stand out is Summer C. Howell, who is very cute and natural as Nica’s niece, Alice.
The first half sets the scene and manages to keep the pace going nicely. It isn’t non-stop murder from the start (serial killers do have a ‘cooling off’ period, you know), but it makes up for a slight lack of inventiveness in the bloodshed with emotional resonance. Mancini doesn’t show us too much of Chucky early on, leaving instead snippet shots of his little sneakers running and a body that’s just out of eyeshot, just as in the original CHILD’S PLAY. Thanks to the puppeteers, Chucky’s movements are a mixture of cute and creepy as he is lithe and other-worthly despite being such a dumpy little dude. This comes in handy as the face-off does drag a little, particularly as while some of the cinematography is suitably disorientating, it emphases the beauty of the location rather than the characters and so doesn’t actually add much depth to the narrative.
CURSE OF CHUCKY is a fun addition to the series and the ending should have most people cheering with its tongue-in-cheek jokes and fair serving of splatter. It’s very much Chucky-fan fun, even if it does deviate slightly from series cannon. Let’s hope the little guy’s back again soon.
Reviewed by Dr Karen Oughton (Twitter @drkarenoughton)
The doll is different. The eyes look deeper set and the hair is straightened plastic tat, but Chucky (still voiced by brilliant Brad Dourif) slayed the audience at FrightFest’s world premiere of the unedited director’s cut.
CURSE OF CHUCKY picks up after the other films have finished. We are introduced to Nica (Dourif’s real life daughter, Fiona), a pretty girl trapped in gothic castle of a house owing to her wheelchair and overprotective mom. Out of the blue, a package containing a not-quite cute doll arrives. Queue the carnage, courtesy of the serial-killer-possessed Good Guy toy.
Much of the marketing for CURSE OF CHUCKY would have you believe this is a dark and chilling addition to the Child’s Play series. It’s not quite true and is all the better for it. The tone dives between creepy sections and jump scares that are not too shocking for those less familiar with the series, but it also has one hell of a lot of humor. This is a very, very funny film with everything from verbal jokes on psychiatry to blink-and-you miss it sight gags thrown into the mix. It’s particularly useful as director and creator Don Mancini adds a variation of the final girl theory via Nica, who tries to disregard her disability rather than be the wheelchair-bound burden her snotty sister Barb makes her out as. It adds a nice level of drama to the death scenes that help you to connect to the characters on a more personal basis.
Brad Dourif is the best thing about the film by miles. His comic delivery is absolutely superb and he gives real regret as well as malice to the doll, which is impressive considering he’s mostly made of plastic. Happily, Fiona makes a worthy foil. She’s gutsy but real with it and despite spending a significant amount of the time being what Chucky rightly calls “a whiney *censored*”, she remains highly watchable. You fear for her safety as the chair device (ahem) wheely works. The other stand out is Summer C. Howell, who is very cute and natural as Nica’s niece, Alice.
The first half sets the scene and manages to keep the pace going nicely. It isn’t non-stop murder from the start (serial killers do have a ‘cooling off’ period, you know), but it makes up for a slight lack of inventiveness in the bloodshed with emotional resonance. Mancini doesn’t show us too much of Chucky early on, leaving instead snippet shots of his little sneakers running and a body that’s just out of eyeshot, just as in the original CHILD’S PLAY. Thanks to the puppeteers, Chucky’s movements are a mixture of cute and creepy as he is lithe and other-worthly despite being such a dumpy little dude. This comes in handy as the face-off does drag a little, particularly as while some of the cinematography is suitably disorientating, it emphases the beauty of the location rather than the characters and so doesn’t actually add much depth to the narrative.
CURSE OF CHUCKY is a fun addition to the series and the ending should have most people cheering with its tongue-in-cheek jokes and fair serving of splatter. It’s very much Chucky-fan fun, even if it does deviate slightly from series cannon. Let’s hope the little guy’s back again soon.
