You know a franchise has been around for awhile when the teaser trailer for an upcoming film touts it as “an all-new movie.” Such is the case with Cult Of Chucky, the seventh installment of the madcap Child’s Play series, a collection of films that make a better case for horror icons’ continued redeployment than, say, the Friday The 13th movies. After the first three films, the series took a more expressly comic turn with Bride Of Chucky and Seed Of Chucky, before returning to its darker and gorier roots with 2013’s Curse Of Chucky. Sadly, if you watched that one on Netflix, you were denied the chance to see a post-credits scene that featured the return of original star Alex Vincent, back for more tussles with the murderous doll imbued with the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray (voiced by Brad Dourif).
As described in the official synopsis, the new one picks up years after the end of the last film. “Confined to an asylum for the criminally insane for the past four years, Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) is erroneously convinced that she, not Chucky, murdered her entire family. But when her psychiatrist introduces a new therapeutic “tool” to facilitate his patients’ group sessions — an all-too-familiar “Good Guy” doll with an innocently smiling face — a string of grisly deaths begins to plague the asylum, and Nica starts to wonder if maybe she isn’t crazy after all.” Vincent returns as the now fully-grown Andy Barclay to help her out, as does Chucky’s helper, the human version of Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly). Curse Of Chucky was an entertaining entry and return to film, but this new one—beginning filming Monday with a planned 2017 release prior to Halloween—looks like it might combine the various tones into one massive, series-uniting film. Writer-director Don Mancini has our support in this task, as killer dolls continue to be creepy as fuck.