CULT OF CHUCKY (2017)

Studio:       Universal Pictures
Director:    Don Mancini
Writer:       Don Mancini
Producer:  Ogden Gavanski, David Kirschner
Stars:     Fiona Dourif, Michael Therriault, Adam Hurtig, Alex Vincent, Elisabeth Rosen, Grace Lynn Kung, Marina Stephenson Kerr, Zak Santiago, Ali Tataryn, Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif

Review Score:

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Summary:

Following four years in an asylum, Nica Pierce questions her sanity when multiple Chucky dolls seemingly start a new killing spree.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

When their conversation turns to the subject of his troubled past, Rachel walks out on her dinner date with Andy Barclay. Andy returns home to his secluded cabin where he keeps Chucky’s sentient head, disfigured from previous attacks and a shotgun blast, inside a hidden wall safe. After Chucky taunts him, Andy prepares to torture the doll head with a blowtorch.

Having successfully convinced her that Chucky was a delusion and she was responsible for multiple murders, Dr. Foley transfers Nica Pierce from Lockmore to the medium security Harrogate Psychiatric Hospital following a conviction and four years of treatment. Nica meets nurses Carlos and Ashley as well as fellow patients Angela, Claire, and Madeleine.

Nica also meets schizophrenic Malcolm, who alternately believes he is Michael Phelps, Mark Zuckerberg, and later, Charles Lee Ray. Nica and Malcolm have sex.

During a group therapy session with all of the patients, Dr. Foley presents a Good Guys doll named Chucky intended to aid in Nica’s treatment. Believed to be delusional, Angela warns that Chucky called her on the phone to say he would be coming for Nica. Claire angrily dismisses Nica’s claims that Chucky is real. Madeleine takes protective possession of the doll, insisting it is her child.

Claiming to be the legal guardian of Nica’s 12-year-old niece Alice, Tiffany Valentine comes to the hospital to visit Nica. Tiffany tells Nica that Alice died. She then gives Nica a Chucky doll that Alice supposedly used in her own therapy. Dr. Foley takes the doll to his office.

After arming himself with a scalpel, one of the Chucky dolls runs into Angela. Annoyed at Angela’s craziness, Chucky vows to come back for her after he finds Nica.

Chucky finds Nica bleeding to death from a suicide attempt in her room. Nica passes out.

Nica wakes to a message written in a pool of her blood on the floor that says, “not so fast.” Nica discovers that Angela was murdered in a manner made to look like suicide, with the message “Chucky did it” written in a pool of Angela’s blood.

Andy reviews surveillance footage from when he unsuccessfully tried proving to Dr. Foley that his Chucky head is sentient and Nica is innocent.

Both Chucky dolls are present during another group therapy session discussing Angela’s death. Nica remembers that Tiffany Valentine was Charles Lee Ray’s girlfriend, renewing her suspicions about the dolls. Dr. Foley melts the right hand on Tiffany’s doll to prove it isn’t alive. However, Madeleine refuses to allow Foley to do the same to her doll.

The burned doll bites Claire when she tries throwing it down a trash chute. Dr. Foley and Carlos sedate Claire after she goes into hysterics claiming the doll is alive.

Nica watches from a window as Madeleine stands over an open grave outside with her Chucky doll. Chucky flips off Nica before Madeleine throws him into the grave to lure Malcolm. Madeleine pushes Malcolm into the grave. However, Nica is shocked when she sees Malcolm retrieve the doll for Madeleine. Malcolm seemingly glares up at Nica conspiratorially after Carlos and Ashley help him out of the hole.

The burned Chucky uses a compressed gas tank to destroy a skylight above the gurney Claire is restrained to. Falling glass decapitates Claire, though her death is ruled accidental.

Andy reads about the two deaths at the asylum online. As the Chucky head taunts him again, Andy retrieves a Good Guys doll with shorn hair from a closet.

Nica warns Dr. Foley that both Chucky dolls are murderous. Foley hypnotizes Nica. During their session, Foley kisses Nica, implying that he regularly abuses her while she is under hypnosis. Chucky knocks out Foley from behind. Chucky gives a shard of broken glass to Nica and tells her to murder the doctor, but she passes out.

Nica recovers from a haunting vision of Alice and Chucky. She discovers Dr. Foley survived, but he believes Nica attacked him.

While driving to Harrogate, Andy receives a cellphone call from Tiffany. Tiffany relays a one-word message from Chucky that says, “disembowel.”

Madeleine breastfeeds her Chucky doll. Afterwards, Madeleine smothers the doll with a pillow. Dr. Foley confronts Madeleine about the real-life murder of her son Joshua, for which she was institutionalized. Madeleine’s Chucky doll is buried outside during a mock funeral.

Andy arrives at Harrogate. When the guard refuses admittance, Andy punches him so that he can be committed as a patient.

Nica watches from her window as the buried Chucky comes out of his grave. The other Chucky injects Nica with a sedative.

Dr. Foley receives a package containing the Good Guys doll Andy retrieved from his closet.

The resurrected Chucky visits Madeleine while she is on suicide watch. Madeleine allows Chucky to kill her by forcing his entire arm down her throat. Ashley quits when she finds Madeleine’s body and the doll missing an arm. Dr. Foley has Carlos throw the doll down the trash chute.

Dr. Foley finds Nica in his office. With Nica restrained by a straightjacket in her wheelchair, Foley puts a pair of red shoes on Nica as he licks her feet. Chucky knocks out Foley again. Nica again refuses to kill Foley with Chucky’s broken glass.

The second Chucky enters the office. One of the dolls chants a voodoo spell over Andy’s doll, turning that doll into a third Chucky. Chucky explains that he discovered a spell allowing him to occupy multiple bodies at once. Chucky adds that he also possessed Alice to become a murderer, but ultimately returned to doll form because Alice felt too much pain.

Carlos enters the office. The three Chucky dolls brutally slaughter him.

The guard outside the hospital notices an empty car with a Tiffany doll in its backseat. Tiffany Valentine slits the guard’s throat from behind.

Chucky casts a spell allowing him to possess Nica and make her crippled legs mobile. When Foley regains consciousness, Nica stomps in his head while still wearing the shoes he put on her.

Nica confronts Malcolm about impersonating Charles Lee Ray. A Chucky drills into Malcolm’s head from behind.

Andy’s Chucky doll attacks Andy in his padded room. Andy rips open the doll’s torso to retrieve a gun he hid inside it. Andy expends all of the bullets shooting the doll before crushing its head with his foot.

Nica taunts Andy. The facility goes into lockdown, trapping Andy inside his room.

Nica calmly walks outside the hospital to join Tiffany. Nica and Tiffany kiss. The two women drive away laughing while the Tiffany doll also laughs in the backseat.

Andy’s old friend Kyle from Kent Military Academy arrives at the cabin to torture the Chucky head, explaining that Andy sent her.

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Review:

It took four years in a maximum-security asylum following her conviction for murder, but Dr. Foley successfully convinced Nica Pierce that the diminutive doll she claims killed her family was a figment of her imagination.  Nica’s ongoing therapy now continues at Harrogate, a remote facility filled with an assortment of schizophrenics, delusional baby killers, and a man who alternately believes he is either Michael Phelps or Mark Zuckerberg.

Nica’s ongoing therapy also includes intimate sessions with a Good Guys doll named Chucky.  Dr. Foley picked one up at Hot Topic, hoping to heal Nica by forcing her to confront her fears head on.  Nica doesn’t want to face one Chucky doll, let alone two.  Yet that’s exactly what happens when Tiffany Valentine shows up to drop off a doll that belonged to Nica’s niece Alice.

When strange suicides start decapitating criminally insane patients, Nica immediately assumes the deaths are no accident.  She’s suddenly sure one or both Chucks are somehow up to old tricks.  What’s weirder though is that if Chucky is indeed haunting Harrogate, how is Andy Barclay still in possession of a severed, sentient Chucky head with a shotgun hole in its face?

Picture the “Child’s Play” series on a graph of competing sine waves where one line measures each installment’s traditional frights while the other constitutes comedic value.  The horror line initially dominated the humor line, although the gap between peaks grew until “Seed of Chucky” really widened the margin with its emphasis on campiness over creepiness.  “Curse of Chucky” (review here) then brought the humor back down, submerging it under the horror wave once again, to match an overall mood more synched to the first film’s thriller tone.

“Cult of Chucky” stays closely in step with “Curse of Chucky” as a generally straight horror movie.  The comedic curve does bump back up a bit however, as writer/director/franchise father Don Mancini is too wise of a filmmaker to take Chucky too seriously.  After all, we are talking about a serial killer who transferred his soul into a children’s toy using voodoo, who has also been supernaturally resurrected in one improbable manner after another.  There would be something wrong if a Chucky movie didn’t have some sense of humor about itself.

“Cult of Chucky” rides a fluctuating wave of its own as it oscillates atmospheres within the movie.  The first half hour stays tight on a slow-to-start psychological mystery, hitting typical notes of “what’s going on?” and “is this all in her head?” suggestions that don’t really fulfill their promise.  A particular mid-movie moment involving an open grave doubles down on inferring a sinister conspiracy at the asylum too.  It, and a few other ultimately unfair misdirects, don’t make much retrospective sense after the plotline’s truth is in the open.

But once Chucky starts being Chucky, which isn’t until halfway through, “Cult of Chucky” starts getting crazier with the carnage, finding a more spirited personality in the process.  This “anything goes” attitude energizing the back half is what has kept the series strong, relevant, and able to creatively reinvent itself no matter its missteps.

As venerable fright film franchises go, only “A Nightmare on Elm Street” has been as fearlessly imaginative regarding its sequels.  “Cult of Chucky,” like every “Child’s Play” movie before it, willingly does whatever it takes to feel fresh, please fans, and keep its own continuity in check while still taking risks to further the fiction.  It doesn’t always work, and doesn’t always work within this sequel specifically, but the commitment to quality over cash grab is clearer here than perhaps any other horror series.

Meta humor breaks a few fourth walls in groan-worthy ways.  We don’t necessarily need a Jennifer Tilly reference, or a “Hannibal” crack to leave us wondering when in the world Chucky had time to watch two seasons of a television series.  On the whole however, “Cult of Chucky” comes out as a spooky, splattery scary movie with only enough self-aware satire to acknowledge how silly it is.  If you’ve remained a happy passenger on the “Child’s Play” train through the highs and lows of the previous six films, your boarding pass is still good for an entertaining ride on “Cult of Chucky” too.

Alternate capsule review from a conversation with my girlfriend:

Me: “I saw ‘Cult of Chucky’ today.”
Her: “And?”
Me: “It was alright.  Kind of silly.”
Her: “Well, that’s Chucky.”

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score:  75

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