Curse of Chucky

Curse of Chucky is the sixth film in the popular Childsplay series, a franchise of 80s tongue in cheek horror films about a murderer who’s come back to life as an ugly, ginger doll. Desperate to seek revenge for his death, Chucky waits a whole nine years (the last film in the series was Seed of Chucky, released in 2004) to post himself in a box to an unsuspecting family and begin yet another bloody massacre.

Set four years after the conclusion of the previous film, Curse of Chucky sees a disabled young woman and her mother terrorised by the doll when a mysterious parcel turns up at their mansion. When she finds her mother dead, Nica (Fiona Dourif) begins to suspect that the doll might have something to do with recent bloodshed. 

Curse of Chucky managed to make Childsplay current again without resorting to a remake which may seem like a blessing for fans. However the storyline and general look of the film is so shit Chucky would’ve been better off staying dead. This fifth instalment nine years after the last in the series seems completely unnecessary, and Don Mancini and David Kirschner fail to make the film good enough to justify the need to revisit a long-dead franchise. Fans of the Childsplay series will most likely feel very let down by this long-awaited sequel, and you’d think that with nine whole years to prepare for the film Mancini and Kirschner could’ve conjured up something a bit better.

Until the end of the film (when he removes his ‘make up’ to reveal his iconic scars) Chucky looks completely ridiculous with a gormless, bloated face that makes him look a bit like Adele. His hair seems to be longer and more luxurious than before which not only adds to the girly Adele look that he’s got going on but makes you wonder whether he spent the last nine years being pampered at a salon. The film’s tongue in cheek style does nothing to redeem the fact that the whole thing is utterly stupid and it’s almost as if Curse of Chucky is a parody of itself.

Let’s be honest, most grown adults would be able to defend themselves against a doll that barely reaches knee-height, whether it was wielding a knife or not, so how on Earth is Chucky still managing to get one up on grown adults after six whole films? Why does no one think to kick him in the face or pick him up by his shiny mane of ginger hair and fling him at the wall? I’m pretty sure wrestling a knife off a doll wouldn’t be that difficult, and it certainly wouldn’t be hard to tie the little fucker up so he can no longer run around with a knife and kill people. The previous Childsplay films were always bordering stupid but seemed to have a decent enough storyline (albeit very tongue in cheek) and they looked good enough to be watchable. Maybe it’s because Childsplay just isn’t relevant any more, or maybe it’s because Curse of Chucky is just a very poor attempt but whatever the reason, Curse of Chucky lacks the same intelligent humour and scary atmosphere of any of the other films, and frankly just feels like a bit of a joke.

Childsplay is just one of those films that probably won’t ever be scary again. It needs to stay in the 80s – early 2000s and not return again. There is nothing, save remaking the original films (please, don’t even try it) that can be done with Childsplay to make it relevant now, it’s one of those films that works as a dated, tongue in cheek and slightly scary horror film but the ginger doll just doesn’t seem scary when plopped in a 2013 movie. Hopefully Chucky will stay away from the big screen for longer than 9 years this time.