Thoughts on “Child’s Play”, and Why “Cult of Chucky” is Good, Actually

Out of all the 80’s franchises to get tarnished by terrible, late 2000’s remakes, you would have to imagine that 1988’s “Child’s Play” would have to join the list eventually.

A series spanning over thirty years, it’s certainly a collection of movies with… interesting, we’ll say, stories and tones. For it’s first three films, the story of “Child’s Play” revolves around a serial killer (Brad Dourif) possessing a popular children’s doll before being killed by police. This doll ends up in the hands of Andy Barclay and his mother, the former of which spends these next three films trying to escape the killer doll, who goes by Chucky. By the fourth movie, “Bride of Chucky”, the plot is more focused on the dolls than the people, and has completed it’s transition from genuine horror to black comedy.

“Seed of Chucky” (2005) was the last film in the franchise until 2013, wherein “Curse of Chucky” was released to Netflix as a soft-reimagining; this film was the first since the original to really make an effort towards genuine horror, although not completely abandoning it’s humor, either. “Cult of Chucky” was released in 2017 as a direct sequel to the 2013 film, and is currently the only one of the two still remaining on Netflix (for whatever reason).