The Chucky show revisited one of horror’s most controversial sequels

The primary season of Chucky began out plausibly stand-alone. Although the idea and traditional design of a killer doll voiced by Brad Dourif stays, the character is dropped into a brand new setting with a brand new solid. Bullied homosexual middle-schooler Jake (Zackary Arthur) is the one to search out the classic doll at a storage sale, and chaos ensues. It appears like a delicate reboot of kinds, rigorously weaving in characters and different plot factors from the prior seven movies across the edges of Jake’s story.

Having laid the groundwork, nevertheless, the present’s not too long ago concluded second season takes a way more direct method to the franchise’s personal historical past, selecting to handle three a long time of continuity and contrasting tones head-on. And it coalesces into one among 2022’s most fascinating TV exhibits — a whirlwind meta horror-comedy that unpacks the franchise’s historical past whereas exploring {our relationships} to our mother and father with stunning maturity and nuance.

Nonetheless overseen by creator, author, and sometimes-director Don Mancini, the sequence has confirmed shockingly malleable, continually evolving to satisfy new cultural moments as its start within the ’80s slasher growth gave strategy to one thing extra self-aware and comedic. Its present kind as a TV present is as emblematic of the period as any of the prior movies, and essentially the most stunning improvement of the second season is how Mancini and his collaborators deal with a number of the franchise’s most contentious installments. It might not at all times work, however it’s by no means something lower than fascinating to behold.

Picture: Syfy

Within the aftermath of the primary season, the sequence transplants its surviving teen trio of Jake, Devon (Björgvin Arnarson), and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) to a Catholic boarding college. Below the attention of strict nuns and a self-important headmaster, they discover themselves locked down in an unfamiliar atmosphere, very similar to in 1991’s Baby’s Play 3. That movie jumps ahead in time, recasting Chucky’s youngster nemesis Andy Barclay as a troubled teen who’s gone from the care of his single mom to varied foster households to, lastly, the army academy that serves because the film’s fundamental setting.

Baby’s Play 3 is a reasonably stale movie, principally notable for a way jarring its pre-Columbine college gun violence performs as we speak. To evolve with the instances, the 1998 follow-up Bride of Chucky seems to be to the self-aware Scream and leans into comedy, giving Chucky a comedic foil in previous flame Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly), who makes use of the e-book Voodoo for Dummies. Abandoning the Andy Barclay character and cranking up the absurdity, the movie concludes with Tiffany giving abrupt doll-birth, the results of a fast-forward “voodoo” being pregnant that adopted her and Chucky’s earlier affirmation that they have been each anatomically appropriate and, uh, purposeful.

The next movie to comply with that doll-child, Seed of Chucky, has lengthy remained essentially the most contentious of the franchise. Launched into the early-2000s heyday of paparazzi and South Park, the movie marks Mancini’s directorial debut and is much extra of a gross-out Hollywood meta comedy than a traditional horror movie. Individually handled as a boy, Glen, by Chucky and as a woman, Glenda, by Tiffany, the kid’s gender dysphoria manifests as distinct personalities. The place Glen is timid and peaceable, Glenda embodies the horror trope of the cross-dressing assassin, albeit in a way more sympathetic gentle than different examples within the style. The way in which the movie resolves this plot level is difficult, to say the least. In what’s far and away the franchise’s most audacious meta casting gag, the Tiffany character performed by Jennifer Tilly possesses the physique of an actress she idolizes: Jennifer Tilly. She then offers start to redheaded twins, which individually home the Glen persona and the Glenda persona.

Till Chucky’s second season, the franchise’s response to the mainstream rejection of Seed of Chucky has been to depart it within the background. The 2013 and 2017 direct-to-DVD sequels Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky are primarily delicate reboots earlier than the TV sequence’ personal delicate reboot, taking a back-to-basics method that finds a Chucky doll menacing a brand new character, Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif), who he ultimately possesses. Tilly has a small position within the latter movie, once more going by “Tiffany Valentine.” Nica notes Tiffany bears a putting resemblance to Jennifer Tilly; it’s concurrently a wink to Seed of Chucky followers and a largely extraneous, ignorable element for many who both haven’t seen the movie or dislike its broad tonal departure. There’s not a peep about Glen or Glenda till the primary season of Chucky, when the killer doll tells Jake that he has a gender-fluid youngster he accepts as a result of he’s “not a monster.”

Picture: Syfy

In its willpower to reconcile each side of the franchise, nevertheless, Chucky now not relegates Seed of Chucky to a enjoyable background reference. A big chunk of the second season is devoted to addressing simply how Tiffany has lived for as long as Jennifer Tilly. Who handles her funds? Who solutions her mail? Are the cops suspicious? These questions (and extra) that no person was asking are belatedly and hilariously answered, culminating in a completely deranged fourth episode solely devoted to a homicide thriller inside Tilly’s mansion, the place the individuals who knew Tilly earlier than her possession stage an intervention. Her sister, Meg Tilly, is there, as is her good friend Sutton Stracke of The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills. So, too, are beloved actors Joe Pantoliano and Gina Gershon, who co-starred with Jennifer Tilly within the Wachowskis’ masterful pre-Matrix crime thriller Sure.

The homicide thriller episode appears nearly separate from the remainder of the sequence, with no cuts to the Catholic college plot that operates because the season’s fundamental story. Chucky himself doesn’t seem in any respect, besides in jokey bookend segments because the host, and the episode visits fictional deaths upon a number of nonfictional individuals, of the type not seen since Seed of Chucky claimed the lives of Redman (who performed himself) and Britney Spears (who didn’t). However most crucially, it reintroduces Glen and Glenda as nonbinary adults, each performed by Lachlan Watson. And in what’s as a lot a testomony to Watson’s efficiency because the sequence’s absurd ambitions, Glen and Glenda turn out to be pivotal characters for the remainder of the sequence and its themes.

The elevated visibility of queer narratives has been core to the Baby’s Play franchise’s evolution. We see this metaphorically within the possession of Nica, who Chucky makes use of to renew his relationship with Tiffany. We see it within the very first episode of the TV sequence, too, within the artsy Jake’s tough relationship together with his father, a struggling mechanic (Devon Sawa, carrying a big goatee) reluctant to just accept his son’s sexuality as something however a section. The return of Glen and Glenda is a pure match, permitting Mancini to reexamine the ending to Seed of Chucky.

Picture: Syfy

In a 2019 essay for Little White Lies, Sam Bodrojan writes, “Mancini gives the type of touching summation numerous ostensibly critical movies about gender have didn’t articulate. What vices and values we develop are distinct from however should even be considered in context of our mother and father; their relationship with our queerness might by no means absolutely match up.” That is maybe finest seen by Chucky’s exploration of Glen and Glenda, and their mom’s determination to maintain them in the dead of night about their true origins. They’ve by no means met their father and are unaware he’s a killer doll. They don’t know that they themselves have been as soon as a single doll, they usually don’t know the lady who raised them is a separate one who has possessed the physique of Jennifer Tilly. To the world and themselves, they’re the Tilly twins. However the Tilly twins undergo from nightmares and an inescapable sense that one thing is lacking – the fallout of a parental determination that dovetails with the broader failures of adults all through the sequence.

Whereas Jake’s father appears extra agreeable when sober, his intolerance escalates to verbal and bodily abuse when drunk. Within the second season, Jake remarks that possibly they might have labored it out sometime, however the alternative won’t ever come: Chucky kills Jake’s dad within the present’s first episode, hoping to goad Jake into murdering the youngsters who ridicule him all by himself. For Vulture, Louis Peitzman observes, “The present is each actually and subtextually about popping out, with Jake working laborious to suppress his inside urges. The sequence hyperlinks Jake exploring his sexual id with Jake exploring his killer instincts, however in a 2021 twist, it depicts each with none of the disgrace that historically colours metaphors like this.”

Although not one of the different adults are so overtly hostile as Jake’s father, they’re hardly significantly better. Jake stays together with his uncle (additionally performed by Devon Sawa, sans goatee), who relentlessly pressures his personal son (Teo Briones) to run observe and make it into an Ivy League school. Jake’s good friend Lexy is ceaselessly at odds along with her personal mom (Barbara Alyn Woods), the city’s narcissistic ex-mayor. There are good mother and father, however they find yourself dispatched alongside the unhealthy ones, as part of Chucky’s final purpose to be the one influential authority within the children’ lives. A constructive grownup determine wants the chance to intervene and to behave, and though the children do encounter just a few, individuals like Chucky and even the college headmaster (Devon Sawa for a 3rd time, now in huge glasses) win out by being way more assertive of their pursuit of their objectives.

Even when the second season turns into crowded with all of its concepts, characters, and personalities, Chucky is a present in contrast to every other. With incisive examinations of itself as a franchise and extra trenchant commentary on queerness in our fashionable age, it takes an impressively constant have a look at how kids are formed by the adults they develop up with, all whereas remaining a wickedly enjoyable time.

The primary season of Chucky is obtainable to observe on Peacock. The second season is obtainable for digital buy or rental on Amazon, Apple, and Google Play.