Child's Play : La Poupée du mal

One of the best horror movies ever made and my favourite film of the year so far. Having very low expectations for remakes and not watching the trailer gave me very little reasons to be hyped for this film but the end result is complete satisfaction.

In an era where horror movies are released every other week and is now the favourite cake of the town we have seen many reboots, new experiments like Hereditary and also monster horrors like A Quite Place. Child's Play is uniquely great because it doesn't compromise in violence and is strictly made only for adults. Gabriel Bateman is the star of the film and has given an another great performance as a weird child after his role in Lights Out. Audrey Plaza doesn't have much screen time in this film and is mostly just a supporting cast.

Lars Klevberg shows us a possible future of AI takeover and the dangers of too much sophisticated technology. The way children today spend more time in phones rather than playing in grounds or reading books is one of the biggest tragedies of our time, Klevberg subtly shows how it could lead to a collapse of a society. Poor labour rights, Abusive bosses, excessive technology and the flaws of capitalism are well highlighted in the movie and effectively are the reasons we get to the horror part.

A remake, but certainly not in the traditional sense. Sure there is some resemblance with the original, but it has a complete new origin story for Chucky, to name just one thing. This one is Completely able to stand alone, in my opinion! Well done, I enjoyed it!

Child's Play (2019) was really good to be fair! Hilarious "animatronics" like in the original, shocking OTT gore, comedy.... everything you want in a movie about a killer doll! Don't go in comparing it to the original, just enjoy the little nods to it! Hamill makes Chucky feel more creepy, Plaza can do no wrong anyway in my eyes... all the cast were solid in all honesty!

Buddi is a doll produced by the Kaslan Corporation. It's a high-tech companion that can connect to the myriad of Kaslan products. A disgruntled employee turns off all the safeguards in one of the dolls. Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza) is a struggling single mom to hearing impaired Andy. She is desperate to get a Buddi and the store cashier takes a damaged returned doll from her workplace. The doll insists on being called Chucky. Detective Mike Norris (Brian Tyree Henry) is the son of the Barclays' neighbor. Chucky, with the bad programming, starts killing and Detective Mike investigates.

This is NOT Chucky. This is not the franchise. This is all wrong. The doll is ugly AF. Chucky is a beautiful horror icon. If one overlooks those stuff, this is actually a well-made horror movie. It seems to dabble in some camp but mostly, it's a sincere horror. Before watching it, I had full expectation of an ugly mess. The first visual is the ugly mug of the doll and it seems to be well on its way. Somehow, the camp slowly faded and it gets replaced by a competent effort in all areas. The kids are great rooting interest. Aubrey Plaza is a fine mom with an edge. I am struck by the sense that the movie is in good hands. I have never seen anything from this director but maybe I will keep an eye out for him in the future.

I think this movie works best if you go into it watching it on it's own terms, as it's own thing and not thinking of it as a Child's play remake because if you're a Chucky purist you probably will hate this movie because it takes so much of what you love about the Child's play movies and totally tosses it out and replaces it with something totally different. But for me, I could watch it on it's own terms and I enyojed what this movie had to give by making Chucky AI that actually does want to be Andy's friend but it is deeply broken on the inside. It's able to explore some very different things like friendship, jealousy and it takes things in a very different direction. For me it's not as good as the original, but I can still have a lot of fun with it.