ChildsPlay

Child’s Play (1988)

The movie opens with Detective Mike Norris chasing down a murderer named Charles Lee Ray. Even though he is shot and dying Ray has a few tricks up his sleeve. As he dies he uses his voodoo to transfer himself into the body of a Good Guy doll named Chucky! Eventually he ends up in the hands of a young boy named Andy and goes back to his killing ways. This gets the attention of Detective Norris, who eventually starts to believe the kid’s story about Chucky being alive. This leads to a finale where the detective, the boy, and his mother go up against Chucky. Who now is hell bent on transferring his soul to Alex!

I’ve never been a huge fan of this movie, but I have to say after watching it again for this review it really is a blast. The story is very well paced and keeps something fun and interesting on the screen most all of the time. I love the setup with the serial killer transferring his soul to a child’s toy, which is really creepy. But the best part is that initially you aren’t sure if it is the kid or that the doll is really possessed. This is lost in the fact that there have been so many sequels that we all know the iconic Chucky, but here that isn’t so obvious. After the big reveal the movie does a great job making the doll actually seem dangerous. I think what really helps this is bringing Brad Dourif back to voice Chucky. His performance both early in the movie as Charles Lee Ray and then later as the voice of Chucky is key to this movie working. The voice connects the killer with the toy in a way that makes the whole thing much more frightening. Other performances from Chris Sarandon, Catherine Hicks, and Alex Vincent are all solid. Especially good is child actor Alex Vincent who is asked to not only carry parts of the movie but act against an inanimate object (the doll). He is surprisingly good and gives one of the better performances that I’ve seen a child give in a horror film.

The movie doesn’t have much blood in it. In fact the movie is light on kills and what we do have are fairly bloodless (exploding house, fall from the window). There is a neat bit with Chucky taking a scalpel to a doctor, but that is about it for the blood. But where the special effects really do shine is the performance of the Chucky doll. They do an excellent job bringing him to life on the screen. Whether it is a puppet or a small person on a special set I really don’t have any complaints with how it looks on screen. This is huge for the success of the movie because if Chucky looks fake or silly then the movie won’t be able to sustain the mood and atmosphere that it works so hard to create.

This review is sort of a milestone for me. This is the first official Blu-Ray review that I’ve done for the site. So obviously that means I watched the recently released Blu-Ray of Child’s Play for this review. Included on the disc is a great special feature that goes into detail on the creation of what eventually became the Child’s Play script, as well as casting and shooting the movie. Most all of the major players are interviewed and I found it to be a really nice bonus to an already great Blu-Ray.

Child’s Play works very well as a horror movie and is pretty damn suspenseful and frightening at times. I think that much of this is lost in the silly sequels that more or less turned the Chucky character into a joke. But after not having seen this movie in years I have to say I was impressed. I recommend Child’s Play.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer