Review: Child's Play 2

I watched the first Child's Play as a pre-teen, and I don't think I've ever seen a sequel. Better late than never (he asks, with cautious optimism)?

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The original Child's Play was one of my earliest forays into watching horror. I would have been in middle school, and it presented a pretty silly and safe opportunity to dip my toe into the eighties slasher pool. I have fond memories of the movie, but it didn't leave a strong enough impression to inspire a re-visit even through the last decade of writing reviews. This year, however, my youngest child has been really into watching whatever horror that we'll allow her to, and Child's Play was on the docket. If you can set aside Chucky's foul mouth, there really isn't anything too rough for a pre-teen horror enthusiast to encounter. I enjoyed it well enough this time, but I would probably chalk up any positive impression to mild nostalgia. Still, we decided to press forward onto the first sequel in the franchise, 1990's Child's Play 2. With the premise already well established, part two wastes no time getting into the action, and is all the better for it.

The plot starts off with Chucky getting re-constructed and inadvertantly resurrected by the toy company that produces the Good Guy dolls. Immediately, he hijacks a car and sets off to find Andy, the boy from the original movie that was meant to be the vessal for dead murderer Charles Lee Ray to transfer his consciousness into. I suppose that probably sounds nonsensical if you aren't familiar with the plot of the first Child's Play, but hang in there, I have faith that you can keep up. What follows is a cat and mouse game with Andy, his foster sister Kyle, and the diminutive serial killer. After some body count padding, the action culminates in a toy factory showdown that amps up the creativity and sense of fun that should be the hallmark of a horror-comedy with such a goofy premise. I found the sequel to be better than the original in pretty much every way, and it also got an enthusiastic thumbs-up from my daughter, in case you were wondering.

The smartest decision Don Mancini (the autuer behind the Child's Play franchise) makes is not over-emphasizing the inevitable disbelief that everyone around Andy has regarding the true nature of the doll. That logically has to be an element of the plot, but it would have been a retread of the first movie and countless nineties sitcoms* to make it the driving source of tension for the first two acts. Instead, the doubters usually end up stabbed or beaten within a few scenes of blaming Andy for whatever mischief Chucky is serving up. That allows the plot to advance at a brisk pace leading into the final showdown. As I mentioned above, the toy factory setpiece is an absolute blast, with some cool set design and inventive ways to pose danger to the humans involved, but also to put Chucky through the ringer. A special shoutout should go to the puppeteering and special effects teams, for making Chucky not only a reasonably believable threat, but truly a horror icon. They do a terrific job with the articulation of his body and creating the impression that he could generate enough kinetic energy to act with deadly violence, but equally important is the personality of his facial expressions, and particularly the bratty scowl that perfectly matches Brad Dourif's voice acting. I don't know that I'll end up pursuing the later sequels at all, but I am preemptively annoyed and disheartened by the inevitable CGI versions of the Chuckster that must be out there.

Look, I can't pretend that Child's Play 2 competes with some of the very excellent horror I've reviewed over the past couple of years, but I very much enjoyed myself during its breezy, 90-minute run time. I'd suggest that if you are looking to see what the iconic horror property is all about, skip the first one and go straight to the sequel.

*Meaning that a go-to plot device for sitcoms, especially those aimed at younger audiences, is that a misunderstanding causes a child to be blamed for the antics of their friends/pets/rivals/evil twins/mean principals/cat-eating aliens that they are clandesinely harboring, not specifically that a knock-off My Buddy doll gets posessed by a violent criminal through a bizarre voodoo ritual and wreaks havoc in said sitcomes. The former is probably my most detested sitcom story archtype. The latter I think I could get on board with.