Harefooted Halloween: Cult of Chucky

What I Liked: Curse of Chucky used a small scale format for the story and we continue with that here.  The whole thing takes place in a mental hospital in the middle of nowhere and our favorite killer doll picks off the patients one by one.  I’m sure the limited location and relatively small cast of Curse and Cult were necessities due to the paltry $5 million budgets but they work perfectly fine with the franchise.

This isn’t exactly something that I “liked” but there are some gruesome deaths.  Chucky drills into the back of someone’s head and the bit comes out through the eye, heads are smashed to a pulp and Chucky sticks his small arm down someone’s throat and rips out their, uh, larynx?  I’m not sure.  He tears something out and it’s uncomfortable.  The series hasn’t shied away from getting nasty with the killing methods before but it hits harder this time due to the more serious tone.

Fiona Dourif returns as Nica and delivers another solid performance.  She doesn’t know what the fuck to do or think since being locked up in prison and now a medium security hospital.  Dourif conveys frustration and exasperation well while trying to keep it together enough so she appears to be improving her mental health.  Shout out to Grace Lynn Kung (Miss Sloane) who almost steals the show as one of the other patients.  She plays the part with high intensity not trusting Nica and thinking she knows what’s best for everyone.  Eventually Chucky reveals himself when he targets her and she freaks out because she knows he won’t stop until everyone’s dead.

Cinematographer Michael Marshall is back again and gives us more dream-like camera work.  Combine that with the black and white color palette used and you get a surreal vibe to the piece.  The only splashes of color are Chucky himself and the blood he spills.

What I Didn’t Like: The plot tends to tread water with the characters going back and forth over whether Nica or Chucky is responsible for the murders taking place.  It feels like they never stop debating if Chucky is alive or not and it’s tiring, especially because we know he damn well is alive.  I’m glad they didn’t go down the road of trying to trick the audience into thinking Nica could possibly be the culprit because you can’t win in that scenario.  Either it’s not gonna be satisfying if someone other than Chucky is the killer or a waste of time because we could’ve had more Chucky instead of a tale of deception.  Anyway, the story moves forward pretty slowly with repeated scenes and it can be a bit of slog sometimes.

*Spoilers.  I mean it.  I’m about to complain about the twist ending so this is your last warning.*  The filmmakers felt they needed a new gimmick to breathe life into the thirty year old series and what they came up with is Charles Lee Ray’s soul can now inhabit an unlimited number of bodies simultaneously (this includes dolls and humans).  As long as the magic words are spoken (no amulet needed) he can multiply himself.  Hence the title because it’s like he’s forming his own cult.  Except there are no true believers since they’re technically all the same person.  Ray’s only doing this now because he recently discovered the voodoo spell on the internet.  The idea is ok but man, the execution feels cheap.  We already discussed with Bride how adding more creatures is a fairly common occurrence for a sequel, sometimes yielding incredible results.  It’s the way they do it here that I take issue with.  I don’t like that Ray can clone himself to no end.  Either there needs to be a tradeoff like each copy is less effective than the one before or multiple bodies can only be occupied temporarily or the process to create another possessed doll should be difficult to perform (instead it’s a cinch and basically instantaneous, say two sentences and you’re done), or he should’ve started an actual cult with his followers inhabiting other dolls or people sent out to do his bidding.  They give Ray way too much of a power upgrade and open the door for him to easily take over the world.  More thought and restraint should’ve been put into this.

Overall Impressions: Despite the questionable gimmick the filmmakers decided to employ this time Cult is sorta the closest to the original trilogy than the other sequels.  You have Chucky roaming around killing folks one at a time, the tone is serious except for the occasional joke from Chucky, no one except the protagonist believes the doll is alive until it’s too late and hell, even Alex Vincet returns as Andy Barclay.

Admittedly pitching this as the fourth best installment may not convince too many folks to take a look.  You can’t just jump into this one either.  You would wanna watch at least Curse to better understand what’s going on.  I dunno.  The movie’s fine.