Child's Play

I'd love to be a fly on the wall the day Jeff Bezos sits down to watch Child's Play. It's going to rile the face off of him. It's a very pointed attack on the likes of Amazon & Google et al with their slave like work practices and their insidious encroachment into everyday life that's done in a way that raises it high above your usual slasher film fare. Plus it's great fun. Any film about a killer doll who uses a lawnmower to remove a grown man's face will always be a crowd pleaser.

Andy and his mother Karen Barclay are new in town and they're struggling. She's in a dead end job and saddled with a boyfriend who's a piece of shit. Andy is lonely and his shy nature is making it hard for him to find new friends. Seeing her son withdrawing into himself upsets Karen and she manages to get her hands on a Buddy doll to cheer him up. The Buddy doll is the new must own toy, one that hooks itself into the house wifi and learns all it's owner's behaviours so it can be both a friend and loyal servant to them. Unfortunately for the Barclay's this buddy doll has had it's programming fried by a suicidal factory worker and now Buddy takes any threat to his new owners very seriously.

This is so much better than it any right to be. It reboots a long running franchise in a way that's both entertaining and very relevant to how we live in 2019. We've given all manner of machines and software free run in our homes without a second thought. Siri, Alexa, Amazon echo's, iPhones and Android phones with their always on receivers, all intrusive gadgets that eavesdrop on everything we say and do. Imagine they turned against us. They know our fears, they know our weaknesses, they *shudder* know our search history. We've exposed ourselves to them totally. If they decided to gang up on us we'd be fucked. Now imagine them in the shape of a wifi enabled doll with opposable thumbs who can carry a knife and who's been influenced by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. It's far fetched but it ain't that far fetched. Certainly no more than the original film's voodoo shenanigans.

Like the original movies Chucky is once again the main draw. Voiced by Mark Hamill this time instead of Brad Dourif, he's still a creepy little fecker. The bizarrely coiffed ginger hair, the misshapen gob, the odd blue eyes that change colour when his mood does and his off way with language where everything sounds sinister no matter how innocuous the words used are. Seeing him formulating and carrying out his plans is still a joy and it's even funnier when he claims to be doing it for Tupac (Chucky is East Coast to the core). The human cast gamely tries but they never keep up with him. Aubrey Plaza and Gabriel Bateman are a believable mother & son but the great Brian Tyree Henry of Atlanta fame is wasted in a role that adds nothing but cool cache to the casting (alliteration, huh). Against an enemy who uses horror tactics usually only seen in the Mexican drug wars they never had a chance.

Good horror has always touched on the societal fears of the day. Vampire movies were always a metaphor for disease. Romero's Dead Trilogy was a Vietnam hangover, 28 Days Later looked at our fear of contagion and so on. Now it's time for them to play with the main fear of now, that of constant surveillance, by both the big boys of industry and the Man. It's done in a blunt and unsubtle way but that's how horror needs to be in this day and age. People need to be hit over the head with a message otherwise we won't listen. Technology has just made everything so easy and because of that we're far too willing to overlook it's dodgy side.

The 8th (seriously) film in the Child's Play franchise is well worth your time. It won't be around long though so if you want to see it go now.