Child’s Play was not necessarily a horror franchise that screamed to be remade. That being said, utilizing the angle that is taken in director Lars Klevberg’s (Polaroid) flick, a huge opportunity existed. One expecting an indictment on our reliance on smart technology would be deeply disappointed in the results.
In the world painted by screenwriter Tyler Burton Smith, Buddi is the centerpiece of a tech titan’s Henry Kaslan (Tim Matheson) aspiration to ensure that no child is without a best friend and also that that doll BFF serves as an integral piece in a home high tech circle that includes home security, home entertainment and everything else that can be controlled (i.e. lights, etc.). Immediately, knowing the rich and terrifying history that this doll had in the past, the potential for a dastardly and devilish commentary on high-tech circa 2019 was practically begging to be served. Sure, it goes that direction, but sadly never fully grabs viewers by the lapels and strikes fear into our tech-obsessed selves.
Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza) is a single mother who just moved her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) into a new apartment that is not exactly in the best neighborhoods in town. He’s not adjusting all that well. When she sees the hot toy/home command center that is Buddi returned at the retail store she works in, Karen sees an opportunity to enliven her not-so-happy son. At first, he’s not impressed. But before too long, Buddi wins him over. He names him Chucky, of course, and the pair bond in the most joyous of artificial intelligence ways. Thing is, Chucky does not understand subtlety, sarcasm and most hauntingly how things we say are not necessarily a precursor to action based on those words. “I’m getting sick of this cat” does not mean “I want cat dead.” You get the picture. After all, this is a Child’s Play movie.
Instead of a wallop of a social commentary, Smith and Klevberg creatively combine on a film that is a paint by numbers horror film that doesn’t even possess any of the innate charms that the 1988 flick had. Whereas the first film followed in a long line of slasher horror flicks that permeated that decade of decadence, the remake does not seem to fall into any of the subgenre of horror that exists today. It is not pure popcorn escapism entertainment, nor is it a terrifying tome that gets an update, a la It or to some extent last spring’s Pet Sematary. Child’s Play is flat, unenjoyable and fails to even find moments to laugh at itself. One thing it does possess is a similar prose that those 80s slasher films had that produced laughs where filmmakers had hoped for horror.
Plaza does her thing and that is pitch perfect for portraying Karen. Bateman is a find. His slightly deaf tween has a heart of gold and never once do we feel the immediacy coming from him that would produce a psychotic serial killer doll would grasp onto and execute his horrors. The relationship between Karen and Andy never even fills the tank emotively to draw the viewers in to this family of two that has the love of a larger clan. There’s a detective whose mother lives down the hall that has potential to bring some of that out of our two leads. Detective Mike Norris (Brian Tyree Henry, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) is a potentially rich character to toss into the mix. But in Child’s Play 2019, he is a soul who I like to call a character of convenience. Need Andy to deal with some emotionally trauma from his mom dating a jerk? There’s Norris coming to visit his mother providing an ear to talk to for the young fellow. Need a place to stash a severed head wrapped in gift wrap (seriously)? Of course, it can be a present for Doreen Norris (Carlease Burke). The entire existence for both those characters at the end of the hall is pained and that is just sad. When bodies start to pile up, of course it is Detective Norris who is tapped to investigate. Again, the word convenient comes to mind when both the cop and his mom could have been another layer of emotional cull for the audience.
Then again, Child’s Play is one enormous missed opportunity. With Alexa and her ilk flying off the shelves, smart home items are all the rage and the film could have been an enormous lightning bolt of fear, striking at the heart of a society obsessed with these tech toys. Instead, that connection is never made. The audience shouldn’t have to connect those dots, which is exactly what occurs. Smith fails in his script by failing to grab what he must have felt was a low hanging fruit. That’s the only explanation I have for not going the route of social commentary when it was just begging to be exploited in the most fiendish of ways.
There is also a massive problem with telegraphing the terror that is coming. It’s not necessarily that everything that spooks is predictable. The issue is more centered on the idea that little moments occur, and the audience immediately think, “This is going to come back and bite someone in the butt.” Filmmakers don’t even try to subtly present their clues. The entire affair comes off as lazy, uninspired and a money grab. Horror fans are a wise and savvy bunch and they can smell such things a mile away. Don’t be surprised if audiences do not line up to see how Chucky can scare us in 2019.
The saving grace (beyond Plaza and Bateman) is Mark Hamill. Yes, that Mark Hamill. He voices Chucky and does so in the most menacing and innocently horrifying of ways. The Star Wars legend is no stranger to voice-over work—for example, his role of Joker in the animated Batman series is the stuff of legend. What he brings to Chucky is what is missing in the script. Hamill does his best to utilize inflection and vocal performance to make points that are never laid out in the film or in its barest form—the script.
Sadly, Hamill, Plaza and Bateman can’t save this droll doll’s pop culture return from itself.
Grade: D