Child's Play (2019) | Film Review

Hey Guys x

I'm a huge fan of the original Child's Play film, and one or two of the sequels, so when I heard that this movie was getting re-made, I was really excited. I'm not always excited for re-makes, but when it's of old horror movies that could easily be improved upon with today's technology, that to me seems like one of the best reasons to re-make a film.

After moving to a new house and feeling guilty about her son Andy's (Gabriel Bateman) loneliness, Karen (Aubrey Plaza) buys him a Buddi doll. However, when the Chucky the doll (Mark Hamill) starts to starts acting out of the ordinary, it's up to Andy to stop Chucky before he puts everyone's lives in danger.

My major problems with this film have to do with how much of a good concept the original version was. So if you haven't seen the original, then you'll probably like this a lot more than I did.

For a start, the premise of the original film was a lot more entertaining, a lot more scary, and just made a lot more sense. Spoiler alert (but the movie's been out since June), while the original plot was about an ordinary doll that got possessed because a master criminal died and his spirit went into the doll, this one was about a disgruntled factory worker who intentionally causes the doll to malfunction. The problem with this is that, if you're taking away the supernatural cause, then you have to make everything else in the film realistic so that it makes sense. Therefore, the elements of this movie that were less realistic didn't make sense and didn't really work with this new plot.
In other words, realistic malfunctions can't explain everything that Chucky does, or the things that the other characters do in response.
For example, there's a scene that I love in the original movie where the mother takes out Chucky's batteries, but then he starts talking anyway and that's how she knows that the doll is possessed. Now, realistically in life when tech malfunctions, the first thing we're told to do is to turn it off and on again, and that does work a lot of the time. But even if that didn't work for this malfunctioned version of Chucky, to my recollection, none of the characters even tried to turn him off. Wouldn't that be the first thing you'd do?

One thing that I preferred in this version over the last is the actual character of Chucky. He starts off as a really sweet, likeable character, and the things that he does happen as a result of his love for Andy.
However the problem with this is that, starting Chucky off this way makes the audience automatically warm to him and really like him. But then he takes a U-turn to make him the evil character that the film ends up wanting to portray him as. The film doesn't know whether it wants Chucky to be the 'villain', or a character that you can root for. For me, he quickly became a character that I rooted for, so even when he was doing awful things, I mostly felt sorry for him.

The thing with this movie is that, it shows one of the best reasons to reboot a movie. I never see the point in re-making movies that are seen as near-perfect. But for a small horror movie with a cult following that could be made better with better tech and a slightly new story-line, I completely get why someone looked at the original and thought that they could make it better and more relevant to today. But for me, I would rather it be left alone if it wasn't made better, and I really feel like it wasn't better.

Overall, a fun small horror movie that is a lot better if you're not comparing it to the original the whole time, which I accidentally did!

6/10

Lou