A young single mother gives her 13-yr old kid a Buddi doll for his birthday. The doll (which randomly names itself Chucky) is essentially a walking, talking Alexa, being able to control various electronic systems in your home and has an adaptive learning AI. However, this particular doll's AI is corrupted, lacking certain safety protocols that prevent it from turning homicidal...
Right off the bat, this movie takes a twist from the original franchise. In the original, the doll was just a doll (a "Good Guys" doll, not a "Buddi" doll). It was a mortally wounded serial killer named Charles (a.k.a. Chucky) who used voodoo to transfer his soul into the doll in order to escape pursuing police. His soul got trapped in the doll though, preventing him from regaining human form, and he continues his homicidal rampage as a creepy but unassuming doll.
This remake removes the supernatural element from the story, instead making the doll essentially HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a corrupt AI that just wants to be best friends with the kid it imprints on and will stop at nothing to remove any obstacles that keep them apart.
Overall, it was kind of a meh film. The plot was super obvious and I spent a lot of the film just waiting for the Chucky doll to start murdering people. Also, the doll was super ugly and never would've sold in real life, which kind of took me out of the story. It felt like they designed a doll that would look super evil, then tried to make it display a normal relaxed face. Plus, there were a few scenes where the face was 100% CGI (and poorly done too). The doll was just too distracting and not really scary. Although I did like the idea that his eyes were a digital display and would turn red when he was doing evil deeds. That helped to make him appear a little more sinister overall and was a unique take on the character.
Still, Chucky was small, slow, and light-weight. It bothered me that no one just punted the thing across the room when it came for them. Only a couple times did it display any real speed, but overall, its intimidation factor was practically nil. Because it was a learning AI, it was slow to process and decide on actions, so the only way anyone really got hurt is because they were even slower to understand the situation they were in. It was the standard horror movie trope, where people in danger just stood around gawking instead of getting the hell out of there. Or doing anything useful.
A note on actors: Aubrey Plaza was pretty decent in this. It was a bit distracting at first, with her trying to play mother to a 13-yr old kid (I thought maybe they were siblings at first), but they really beat you over the head with the exceptionally young mother role, justifying it as her having the kid after a "wild party at 16 years old." Aubrey has also pointed out that her own mother is about the same age difference from her as she was from her character's son in this film, so she understood the role pretty well and made it pretty believable. It was her first acting role as a mother, which makes me feel old because she's the same age as I am IRL.
Chucky's voice actor was Mark Hamill, whose Joker voice acting in the Animated Batman series is legendary. He did an excellent job of voicing the doll, making him sound super creepy. He may have been the closest thing to a saving grace this movie had.
The creator of the original Child's Play franchise (along with a handful of the franchise's cast) has announced that he had absolutely nothing to do with this film. Instead, he claims he's been busy working on a TV series to continue his original Chucky story. So this is essentially a one-off story that has no ties whatsoever to the original franchise. Thank god. I much prefer the supernatural serial killer Chucky to this HAL wanna-be knock-off.
I'd recommend this film just for fans of the original movie series who are curious to see a unique twist on the character, but it was not a very entertaining film overall.
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