Chucky season 3, part 2 review: This is (hear us out) a horror-comedy masterpiece
If you're not tuned into SYFY's series, you're missing some grotesque, gonzo, highly entertaining TV
TV Reviews Chucky
Have you wondered what Chucky, the Child’s Play franchise’s violent and uproarious doll, would do if he got control of nuclear codes? What other disasters could this tiny, murder-loving monster unleash upon civilization? It’s a bizarre idea, so naturally, SYFY’s Chucky boldly tackles it upon its season-three return on April 10. By the time credits roll on episode five (or part two’s first installment), Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif) has increased his body count and plans to start World War III. Besides being an obnoxious psychopath, he wants to decimate everything because no one else should live if he’s dying.
Oh yeah, Fuckin’ Chucky, as he loves to call himself, is on his deathbed. Just look at the photo above to process his rapid aging, but don’t let the massive wrinkles and thinning hair fool you. Serial killer Charles Lee Ray, whose soul inhabits the decaying toy, won’t let his vessel being in extremis stop him. Chucky is initially forced to slow down. After feeling too weak to lift a knife above his shoulder, he proclaims, “Now I can’t even get it up; this is embarrassing.” Thankfully, it’s impossible to keep a Good Guy Doll down, or Chucky wouldn’t be such a wickedly entertaining phenomenon.
Series creator Don Mancini keeps pushing the envelope each year with its horror and humor, turning Chucky into one of the best projects the franchise has ever produced. Hilarious one-liners and pop-culture references are churned out at the same pace as grotesque kills. It’s hard for a slasher to find comedy organically without seeming like a parody, but it happens flawlessly here. Chucky is fun because it’s self-aware and confident in its tone.
Before getting into it, here’s a refresher on part one: Diagnosed in a comical scene with being infected by Catholicism, Chucky is abandoned by his malicious deity Damballa. Without his blessing, Chucky faces deterioration and demise. To save himself, he must kill in the foulest environment for meaningful sacrifices. Our fiendish friend settles into the White House, canonically making it America’s most evil home (Amityville, who?). Chucky tricks the POTUS’ young son into taking him as a toy and luxuriously lives at 1600 Penn while beheading, maiming, suffocating, and crushing humans who work there.
Part two follows up on the aftermath of his murderous spree at a Halloween party. Chucky overcomes his state of decrepitude to hunt, but Damballa doesn’t seem to give a shit. What’s a rotting doll to do? He stays in bed, watches movies like The Boy and M3GAN (“That bitch stole my moves. Fuck you, M-three-gun,” he yells, skyrocketing our desire for a crossover), and generally sulks. His spirit is revived once he gets those nuclear codes. Too bad his three loathed enemies are trapped in the same place. Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind), Jake (Zackary Arthur), and Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) attempt to stop his rampage only to face other unexpected enemies.
Without getting into spoiler territory, the last two episodes of this batch further stretch the imagination with more specters, body doubles, and the spirit realm within the White House. These themes would fall apart and feel corny as hell in weaker hands. However, Mancini has helmed Chucky’s complex story for decades and has an astute grasp on the villain’s absurdity, making season three’s narrative twists feel the right amount of gonzo.
Plus, Chucky’s “plot” isn’t even its strongest card. The sly ridiculousness works because the performances live up to the script. Everyone is as extra as necessary, most notably Jennifer Tilly. If season three has one flaw, it’s that she’s not in it enough. She kills here as Tiffany Valentine, a.k.a. Charles Lee Ray’s girlfriend whose soul thrived in a different toy before possessing the body of the actual Jennifer Tilly. (It’s a complicated situation.)
Meanwhile, Devon Sawa remains excellent as President James Collins, who is tormented by dark visions after witnessing deaths at his party. This is Sawa’s fourth (!) character in three seasons and he’s clearly having fun with the challenge. Also, Dourif arrives in the flesh to play Charles Lee Ray in all his menacing glory, and it’s pretty exhilarating. The rest of the ensemble is mercifully grounded to balance out all the wackiness.
Frankly, this SYFY series has no right to be this goddamn enjoyable and addictive, especially as the first Child’s Play movie was released in 1988 and spawned multiple sequels (not all of them good). But Mancini and the show’s talented team have figured out a formula to keep the horror-comedy unconventionally fresh.
Chucky season three, part two premieres April 10 on SYFY
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This franchise is really kind of a miracle. Still under the control of the same guy who created it, who has kept every bit of it full canon even through some wild tone swings, and it seems like just about every actor from its history is happy to come back on a level only before seen in Cobra Kai. And it even survived a pathetic reboot attempt with the original version still going strong (and now we even have the good version of that movie with M3GAN). I just hope we get one last appearance from Andy, since it would be really weird if a dream sequence where Chucky kills him was the last time we saw him.
It’s a delightfully bizarre show that embraces how crazy the series’ lore has become. Yet every once in a while the show is also oddly touching. It shouldn’t work but it does.
It’s hard for a slasher to find comedy organically without seeming like a parody, but it happens flawlessly here. They aren’t mutually exclusive. High camp and kitsch is by definition a well done, self aware parody that winks at the audience without breaking the fourth wall; corny humor that flows naturally – see what I did there? This episode hilariously reminds viewers that though Chucky’s origins are from Gen X, it’s respectully fighting against the tendency that most modern horror icons – some times quickly, other times painfully slow – get stuck in a rut then die, leaving their legacies ruined or forgotten about beyond horror genre film buffs. It did this so well, because though I am definitely not a horror genre enthusiast I readily recognized the majority of the references and themes without the need of Google or Wikipedia. 😛
This episode slavishly layered on and poked fun of so many horror movie tropes while never feeling heavy handed, including:
The star crossed, misunderstood lovers or frenemies who resolve their differences to (re)join forces against a common threat. Jennifer Tilly as the depraved puppeteer using voodoo magic and dolls was so meta Jake and Devon’s steamy consummation of their love as ‘The Reflex’ by Duran Duran – a pop song two generations older – loudly blares over the soundtrack.A Secret Service agent, clearly with an obscure external agenda, allows Lexy to wooed back into Grant good gracesHenry is still the willfully naive and emotionally neglected young son whom everyone conveniently ignores his concerns or whereabouts until their own violent demiseI ROFLMAO during the horror movie clip scene – *chef’s kiss*. Though Chucky typically voiced nothing but disdain or umbrage, it was clearly production’s open love letter paying homage to a notable man-made, human like, horror film character of each current living generation, from Bride of Frankenstein to M3GAN, tacitly reserving the Gen X timeline for himself.
OMG, using the M3GAN scene-turned-GIF-memes in its entirety was pure genius. I replayed it half a dozen times, delightedly clapping my hands as I howled with laughter and blew kisses at the screen. The political innuendo behind the depiction of the US President’s mental breakdown and the visual sexual overtones of how Chucky overpowers him to get the nuclear codes was comedic camp gold.
ASIDE: Though the timing of this episode may be coincidental, the relevance of all four teens’ costumes seem even more significant when contrasted against to the recent release of Beyonce’s ‘Cowboy Parker’ country themed album, including her Barbie doll like appearance on its cover versus Little Nas X’s stagnanting career since the release of his controversial video for ‘Montero’ +3 years ago. Considering both artists and Chucky are currently among the most wildely recognized and polarizing gay and teen icons. It makes you wonder the level big entertainment coordinates artist’s works and themes.