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Film4 FrightFest 2013 Review – Curse of Chucky (2013)

by

Curse of Chucky, 2013.

Written and directed by Don Mancini.
Starring Fiona Dourif, Danielle Bisutti, Brennan Elliot, Summer H. Howell and A Martinez and featuring the voice talent of Brad Dourif.

SYNOPSIS:

After her mother’s mysterious death, Nica begins to suspect that the talking, red-haired doll her visiting niece has been playing with may be the key to recent bloodshed and chaos.

The Child’s Play series has always been an odd one among the horror collective. The first one is considered  by many to be a cult horror classic (despite Tom Holland’s claims it’s meant to be a comedy) and the series became a campy farce after Ronny Yu’s Bride of Chucky and its less than stellar follow-up Seed of Chucky. But now, after a near 10-year hiatus, everyone’s favourite killer doll is back in the first “true” horror entry of the series, Curse of Chucky.

The film (seemingly) takes place years after the events of Child’s Play 3 and sees paraplegic Nica (played by Brad Douriff’s daughter Fiona) receive a package in the post of a Good Guy doll sent by an unknown source. When her mother dies of “mysterious” circumstances, Nica is visited by her sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti), her husband Ian (Brennan Elliot) and their daughter Alice (Summer H. Howell) who becomes very attached to the Good Guy doll, better known as Chucky. However, Nica is starts to get unsettled by the doll and thinks there may be more to it than meets the eye.
Child’s Play creator Don Mancini deserves a lot of credit for Curse of Chucky as he creates a really tight atmosphere that leads to a lot of tense scenes and his script, while clunky at times, is well-written with some decent characters. He is of course helped by the fact that Chucky is a creepy looking doll to begin with, but his shot choices of the killer are incredibly well-put together. We as an audience already know that he’s up to no good and Mancini never shies away from that, clueing us in that Chucky is plotting something while those around him are none the wiser.
He is also helped by a very strong cast with Fiona Douif giving a very convincing and believable performance as Nica. The decision to make her wheelchair bound leads to some really uncomfortable and tense set pieces and Fiona Dourif plays this very up well. Her father Brad Dourif returns once again to voice Chucky and his scenery chewing performance is of course great, even if he doesn’t have quite the same pitch and tone as he did 25 years ago (but at least this time he doesn’t claim to ‘have a date with a 6-year old boy’). Summer H. Howell is also really good as she takes on the Andy role from Child’s Play as the manipulated child. Although sadly her character is more or less forgotten as the film roles into the third act and the focus is shifted back to Nica. Which brings us to the movie’s biggest problem.
For all the horror elements that Mancini implements (including a thankfully low number of jump scares), he can’t help the fact that his monster is inherently goofy. And the franchise’s comedy-side does rear its head once more as it descends back into wacky territory during the film’s climax. As with every other entry in the series, Chucky is creepy when he isn’t moving (or when he’s just hinting at moving) but when he drops the charade to start killing people, it all becomes a bit too hard to take seriously.
All the tension the movie created falls by the wayside as Mancini not only tries to justify why Chucky is attacking Nica’s family, but also tie the movie in with the rest of the series. Plot threads that were started (including the aforementioned Alice) are left out in the cold with only a couple of lines of dialogue to cap them off. Credit where credit is due, he does make the majority of it work, but it feels more like he was focused more on fan service as opposed to providing a credible conclusion.
With that said, Curse of Chucky could actually be one of the best entries in the series and is easily has the most scares since the first one. The film is expertly shot, the characters are well-defined and the tense scenes really work. It does a good job of slotting itself within the franchise and even has some clever tie-ins to the movies that came before it (including a fantastic end-of-credits stinger). It does lose its way in the third act as it becomes more laughable than scary, but you shouldn’t hold it against it. It’s certainly recommended to fans of the franchise who will appreciate what Mancini is trying to do, but newcomers might not be able to get past the wacky monster posing as a terrifying villain.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.

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