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

The first season of Chucky began out plausibly stand-alone. Though the idea and basic 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 seek out the classic doll at a storage sale, and chaos ensues. It seems 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 show’s not too long ago concluded second season takes a way more direct strategy to the franchise’s personal historical past, selecting to handle three many years of continuity and contrasting tones head-on. And it coalesces into one of 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 shocking maturity and nuance.

Still overseen by creator, author, and sometimes-director Don Mancini, the collection has confirmed shockingly malleable, continually evolving to fulfill new cultural moments as its start within the ’80s slasher growth gave strategy to one thing extra self-aware and comedic. Its present type as a TV show is as emblematic of the period as any of the prior movies, and the most surprising improvement of the second season is how Mancini and his collaborators sort out some of the franchise’s most contentious installments. It might not all the time work, however it’s by no means something lower than fascinating to behold.

Image: Syfy

In the aftermath of the primary season, the collection transplants its surviving teen trio of Jake, Devon (Björgvin Arnarson), and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) to a Catholic boarding college. Under 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 Child’s Play 3. That movie jumps ahead in time, recasting Chucky’s baby 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 predominant setting.

Child’s Play 3 is a fairly stale movie, largely notable for the way jarring its pre-Columbine college gun violence performs right this moment. To evolve with the instances, the 1998 follow-up Bride of Chucky seems to the self-aware Scream and leans into comedy, giving Chucky a comedic foil in outdated flame Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly), who makes use of the guide Voodoo for Dummies. Abandoning the Andy Barclay character and cranking up the absurdity, the movie concludes with Tiffany giving abrupt doll-birth, the end result of a fast-forward “voodoo” being pregnant that adopted her and Chucky’s earlier affirmation that they had been each anatomically appropriate and, uh, useful.

The subsequent movie to comply with that doll-child, Seed of Chucky, has lengthy remained the most contentious of the franchise. Released 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 standard horror movie. Separately handled as a boy, Glen, by Chucky and as a woman, Glenda, by Tiffany, the kid’s gender dysphoria manifests as distinct personalities. Where 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 method 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.

Until Chucky’s second season, the franchise’s response to the mainstream rejection of Seed of Chucky has been to go away it within the background. The 2013 and 2017 direct-to-DVD sequels Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky are basically delicate reboots earlier than the TV collection’ personal delicate reboot, taking a back-to-basics strategy that finds a Chucky doll menacing a brand new character, Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif), who he finally 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 individuals 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 baby he accepts as a result of he’s “not a monster.”

Image: Syfy

In its dedication to reconcile each facet of the franchise, nevertheless, Chucky now not relegates Seed of Chucky to a enjoyable background reference. A major 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 one 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 pal Sutton Stracke of The Real 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 Bound.

The homicide thriller episode appears virtually separate from the remainder of the collection, with no cuts to the Catholic college plot that operates because the season’s predominant 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 sort not seen since Seed of Chucky claimed the lives of Redman (who performed himself) and Britney Spears (who didn’t). But 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 collection’s absurd ambitions, Glen and Glenda turn out to be pivotal characters for the remainder of the collection and its themes.

The elevated visibility of queer narratives has been core to the Child’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 collection, too, within the artsy Jake’s troublesome relationship along with his father, a struggling mechanic (Devon Sawa, sporting a big goatee) reluctant to simply accept his son’s sexuality as something however a part. The return of Glen and Glenda is a pure match, permitting Mancini to reexamine the ending to Seed of Chucky.

Image: Syfy

In a 2019 essay for Little White Lies, Sam Bodrojan writes, “Mancini offers the kind of touching summation countless ostensibly serious films about gender have failed to articulate. What vices and values we develop are distinct from but must also be viewed in context of our parents; their relationship with our queerness may never fully match up.” This is maybe finest seen by way of 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 had been as soon as a single doll, they usually do not know the girl 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. But 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 collection.

While Jake’s father appears extra agreeable when sober, his intolerance escalates to verbal and bodily abuse when drunk. In the second season, Jake remarks that perhaps they might have labored it out sometime, however the alternative won’t ever come: Chucky kills Jake’s dad within the show’s first episode, hoping to goad Jake into murdering the kids who ridicule him all by himself. For Vulture, Louis Peitzman observes, “The show is both literally and subtextually about coming out, with Jake working hard to suppress his inner urges. The series links Jake exploring his sexual identity with Jake exploring his killer instincts, but in a 2021 twist, it depicts both without any of the shame that traditionally colors metaphors like this.”

Though none of the opposite adults are so overtly hostile as Jake’s father, they’re hardly significantly better. Jake stays along 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 faculty. Jake’s pal Lexy is incessantly 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 dangerous ones, as an element of Chucky’s final aim 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 a couple of, individuals like Chucky and even the college headmaster (Devon Sawa for a 3rd time, now in huge glasses) win out by being rather more assertive of their pursuit of their targets.

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

The first season of Chucky is accessible to look at on Peacock. The second season is accessible for digital buy or rental on Amazon, Apple, and Google Play.