Child’s Play is one of those classic high-concept films that can be described in one sentence, thereby making it awfully easy to package and market to its intended teenage audience. I’m no advertising genius, but let me take a shot at it. Here goes: In Child’s Play, a serial killer inhabits the body of a doll, then spends the next 87 minutes killing off those who screwed him around when he was human.
Child’s Play has lots of what I can only hope are intentionally funny moments that revolve around the doll’s human and superhuman capabilities. The premise itself is delightfully silly: a homicidal maniac named Charles Lee Ray (notice how many psychos’ middle names are either Lee or Wayne? Coincidence? Or nominal conspiracy?) uses black magic to take possession of a child’s toy moments before he dies. Karen Barkley then buys Chucky as a Christmas toy for her son Andy, and the mayhem begins soon after Chucky begins to reveal his secrets to the youngster. Chucky gets pretty much all of the best lines, as he fires off a series of nasty jokes about his victims as he plans and executes their deaths.
Several moments in the film pay homage to other horror flicks, with John Carpenter’s Halloween getting singled out for several nods, including an agonising picture of Andy cowering in a closet while clothes hangers dangle above and the killer stalks him just down the hall.
To its credit, Child’s Play has a few genuinely scary moments, such as when Karen (Catherine Hicks delivers a borderline hysterical performance. She seems to be unaware of the comic potential of this material. A campy turn would have been much more interesting) discovers that Chucky is alive. When Chucky slides under the couch, the moments it takes Karen to crouch down to look under the sofa are the most suspenseful in the movie. Mostly, however, director Tom Holland falls back on the clichés of the genre: the false alarm, the victim backing into the screen, the child in peril, the lone voice of reason in a wilderness of disbelief.
The real star of the film is the Chucky doll. His evil glare and twisted grin make Chucky an effective nightmare toy and horror movie villain.
Clever too is the plot complication that allows nobody to believe Andy when he warns that Chucky is alive. In movies of this sort, it is essential that nobody believe the truth. Authorities must cling to their rational, scientific understanding of the world, even when it is clear that this is an ill-based, illusory philosophy. This allows the killer to wreak unrestrained havoc for most of the picture. Director Holland makes good use of the subjective camera, shifting the film’s point-of-view, in order to squeeze the maximum amount of tension out of each scene. Most interesting is the Chucky-cam employed as the film nears its climax. I’ve always wondered what the world would look like if I were a psychotic animated doll. Now I know.
