Review: Bride of Chucky
Murder and vulgarity are all well and good for a killer doll movie, but what's really been missing is romance! I mean, keep all the murder and vulgarity, too, obviously.
How Scream-coded is that movie poster? Man, that movie really did a number on the late-nineties horror aesthetic. Not that Bride of Chucky has any qualms about referencing iconic horror of the past, or about blatantly winking at the audience. The Child's Play movies have never taken themselves too seriously, but the fourth entry in Don Mancini's slasher series has planted its tongue firmly in its silicone and foam latex cheek. From a self-aggrandizing opening scene that places the titular doll in the same pantheon as Fred Krueger, Leatherface and Jason Voorhees, to little nods to other horror icons like Pinhead sprinkled throughout, Mancini and company are clearly catering to the 80's slasher fan who might find the 1998 horror landscape lacking in the specific type of mean weirdness that they took for granted a decade prior. Hey, I'm one of those fans! And even though we are far removed from 1998 and there is no lack of quality frights at my fingertips, I am still nostalgic for the type of thing that this movie is paying homage to. It is truly just homage, though, and for the third straight 31 for 31 entry I am tasked to reckon with a horror-comedy that wants to nudge me in the ribs at least as much as it wants to genuinely scare me.
The story here is that Charles Lee Ray's (the serial killer whose soul has been transferred into a Good Guy doll via voodoo ritual) ex-girlfriend, Tiffany, bribes a cop to steal the dismembered Chucky toy from a police evidence locker, stiches it back together, and uses magic to reanimate it and bring Ray back. The couple quickly gets into an argument that results in Tiffany being transferred into a doll body of her own, and unites them in a mission to get human bodies as replacements. The unlucky candidates are Tiffany's strapping young neighbor and his girlfriend, a baby-faced, pre-Grey's Anatomy Katherine Heigl. The young couple already has problems in the form of Heigl's police chief father who doesn't approve of their relationship, but once the dolls' inevitable murder spree starts up, they have even more reason to go on the run from the police. Low-brow hijinks ensue.
In order for Bride of Chucky to work, it has to get you invested in at least one of the central couples. I could never muster much interest or concern over the protagonists, so it fell to the diminutive pair of star-crossed maniacs to win me over. Luckily, that is the pair that the filmmakers were clearly most interested in, and their toxic rollercoaster of a relationship was by far the most enjoyable part of the movie. Brad Dourif has always been the straw that stirs this particular drink with his just over-the-top enough performance as the series' main villain, but Jennifer Tilly completely holds her own as both a physical and voice actor for Tiffany. The duo's ridiculous dysfunction is fully convincing, as is the idea that they would be inescapably attracted to each other. Beyond the voice acting, the puppetry on display in this movie is beyond impressive. The amount of control and precision deployed in each character's facial expressions alone is mind-boggling, especially looking back from a world where no one would ever even attempt such a thing without CGI.
Will you like Bride of Chucky? Who's to say? Critics certainly didn't when it came out. I thought it was a hoot. It features a gratuitous sex scene between two dolls, John Ritter getting treated like a pin cushion, and a whole slew of other crazy dumb shit. What can I tell you, October is crazy dumb shit season, and I'll take all of it I can get.
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