After the dark spoof comedy of “Bride..” and “Seed of Chucky,” the sixth instalment in the “Child’s Play” series returns its flame-haired killer doll to his more straight-faced roots. “Curse of Chucky,” directed by franchise creator Don Mancini, harks back to the scarier, stripped-down thrills of the original 1988 cult classic to good effect, as the titular pint-sized slasher offs a dysfunctional family one by one in his unending quest to transfer his evil soul into a human body.
Fiona Dourif, daughter of Brad, capably leads the cast as wheelchair-bound paraplegic heroine Nica, whose beloved mother apparently jumps to her death at their remote country house the night after they receive a mysterious package in the mail — inside sits a beaming, bright-eyed Good Guy doll called Chucky, sent anonymously and without any given reason. The next day, Nica’s family — among them her domineering sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) and adorable niece Alice (Summer H. Howell) — come to town to pay their last respects and soon find themselves fighting for their lives, hunted by an unknown (and rather petite-looking) assailant on a dark and stormy night. But who’s the killer? Why, it couldn’t possibly be little Alice's new best friend, that lifeless plastic plaything sitting quietly in the corner... could it?
Voiced again by Brad Dourif, Chucky is much quieter here than in recent instalments, staying silent for the first half outside of the doll’s cutesy, built-in recorded phrases (“Hi, I'm Chucky and I’m your friend 'til the end. Hi-de-ho, ha-ha-ha”). It’s in these earlier moments that the film is at its most suspenseful, with brief glimpses of Chucky’s tiny feet scuttling across the kitchen floor, his head slowly turning in the background and his stubby plastic digits reaching for the rat poison. Later, when Dourif finally gets to speak (and Chucky gets to hack and slash to his heart’s content), we get the Chucky we’ve recently become familiar with: the cackling, foul-mouthed, wise-cracking cabbage patch killer whose tongue is as sharp as the blade he swings and whose twisted ways we just can’t help but love.
The cheaper budget is clear — considering it’s a straight to DVD release, the dodgy CGI is understandable — but Mancini keeps the camerawork lively, makes good use of the mostly single-location setting and has a few neat visual tricks up his sleeve (overhead shots of a short actor moving around while sporting Chucky’s costume are quite clever). I could have done without some of the timeline-skewing fan service towards the end — don’t ask me when “Curse of Chucky" takes place in the franchise, I have no idea — but as a fan of the series and its devilish antihero/antagonist, it’s great to see Chucky back on-screen and back to his old-fashioned ways.
Rating: 6/10
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