What happened if a doll that supposed to be children friendly terror your neighbourhood? Lars Klevberg described it pretty well in the remake of Child’s Play (1988). What makes the reboot fresher is the Chucky doll’s (originally branded Buddi) now not possessed by a serial killer, but learn the bad things it interpreted instead, since it’s a smart doll. I do agree if people called this movie as modernized Child’s Play and you will know why.
Buddi is a smart doll, a dream toys for every child which launched by Kaslan Corp. It’s supported by an AI to let it learn from its surrounding and then act accordingly such as remind its child companion to bring his science book. It also can sync its knowledge to the cloud and integrated to other Kaslan products. To be easy, just imagine that Kaslan is Apple or Samsung in the real world, or just visit its website. Note that the web and all of the promoted items are all fictional, for promoting this movie only. One day a factory employee sabotaged one of the Buddi so it doesn’t have any safety protocol which made the doll harmful and able to learn bad things. That’s an enough sci-fi reasoning to be the origin of the evil Buddi. It’s because the employee angry with his abusive supervisor who would fire him. This unsafe Buddi came to Karen as a returning good at the store she works at. Karen then brought the doll to be an early birthday present for her son, Andy. When Andy activated the doll, it introduced himself as Chucky and became attached to Andy, started to mimic his daily routine, and help him in making friends. But then Chucky showed violences, strangled the cat that scratched Andy, mimicked violent scene from the horror film Andy and his friends watch. Later Chucky acted more dangerously, only to keep Andy not being hurt anymore and to make himself the only Andy’s playmate.
In this version of Child’s Play, the evil showed by Chucky is invested by bad things surrounding it. From the anger of the employee who assembled it, Andy’s hatred to his mother’s new boyfriend, and everything Andy expressed badly and watched. Since Chucky is no longer child-safe, it could learn terrible things and spread terror in its surrounding. I used to doubt about the worst thing the smart Buddi can do without an evil spirit, until I finished watching this movie. The AI and IoT powered Buddi still can deliver terrible terrors which more relevant to today’s era. Its integration with Kaslan devices allows him to orchestrated its terror, included the final one at the end of the movie. Even without the sophisticated devices, Chucky still looked creepy and harm, thanks to the hatred it learned from Andy. Within today’s Chucky, the movie doesn’t hesitate to show blood and stabbed human.
The premise this movie given to Andy is set not too strong. The movie only introduced Andy who is unhappy to his and his mother’s relocation and difficult to make new friends, also with his mother’s new boyfriend in addition. It makes us couldn’t feel what Andy dislikes from his new apartment or what happened in his past. It’s very different with the character development of Billy in Shazam, which could make us understand with Billy’s motivation. The movie also doesn’t explore characters of Andy’s new friends – Falyn and Pugg. They only have important role at the end of the movie, while seems replaceable previously. One more thing I dislike from the movie is the way Kaslan let Chucky become an evil doll. I mean, in the movie, how could a big and trusted industry like Kaslan release a defect doll? Isn’t there a quality control procedure for every doll assembled in the factory? Oh, so that’s how the movie open the plot to create its creepy doll.
In short, this reboot still managed to be a decent horror movie despite lacking character development. My final rating for this movie is 6.5 of 10.
Notes of Hobbies 