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DatBoiChuy
Reviews
Child's Play (2019)
Mixed bag of ideas
Many remakes and reboots seem to suffer from similar problems. Too many changes where the premise or message of the film is completely erased or too many similarities to the original film that makes you question "what's the point of watching this when I've already seen this"
Childs Play 2019 introduces new changes that are welcomed but not that well executed
The biggest change is Chucky himself no longer being a Serial killer possessed doll, instead being a A.I. doll
In a way this change seems unnecessary but personally i can understand this change. Since the 1988 film was meant to be a commentary on popular kids toys such as Cabbage Patch Kids Child's Play 2019 makes commentary on our recent dependency on technology such as Amazon Alexa and Siri, so it is a welcomed change and distinguish this film from the 1988 film.
However this does affect drastically the character of Chucky himself. What made Brad Dourif's Chucky so memorable was his personality, this did affect the later sequels where he became too much of a jokester but in the first film did have a good balance of humor and horror. This new Chucky (Voiced by Mark Hamill) does have a personality but it isn't as entertaining seeing an A.I. that even from first glance is creepy go evil than a dangerous serial killer hiding as a innocent doll that any child would have.
As far as performances Mark Hamill did a good job as Chucky giving a innocence and creepy voice for the character. Gabriel Bateman as Andy Barclay was a entertaining main character, Aubrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry as Karen Barclay and Detective Mike were fine as far as acting in horror movies go, but many of the side characters like Andy's group of friends were incredibly underdeveloped. You can tell that they tried to go for an "It" or "Stranger Things" type of kids club vs an evil villain but it doesn't work since we don't get to know these kids except for Andy.
My biggest problem with the film was the pacing. The first act felt like i was watching the film in fast forward which is quite jarring in comparison to the slow burn of the original.
I understand that they wanted to get all the setup done quick so we could get to the kills but some plot points that you'd think would get development such as Andy's friendship with Chucky, his friendship with the other kids, his hatred for his mother's boyfriend, all that is kinda glossed over in a short amount of time.
The second and third half thankfully are better paced and definitely get more entertaining with the kills that are pretty fun and gory.
The animatronics on Chucky are kinda jarring at first but since he is meant to be a sort or robot toy you could say that his odd movement is just part of the fact that he is a toy so he won't have as much fluid movement as a human's soul controlling a doll.
Overall while i disliked the pacing and how underdeveloped some scenes were i still was entertained by Child's Play 2019 (for what it is of course)
You can't really expect anything groundbreaking from a killer doll movie, you just wanna see people getting killed by a psycho toy and you get that with this movie.
Nothing amazing but still an entertaining time killer