Film Review - Childs Play (2019)

Childs Play is the remake of the 1988 original and this time Mark Hamill is the voice of Chucky the Doll who in this version is also known as Buddi, a doll that like Google Home and Alexa can tap into your home environment so when Andy (Gabrielle Bateman) gets one from his mother (Aubrey Plaza) little do they know that its safeguards have been removed.

This new Childs Play I originally had little to no interest in seeing as I wasn’t a huge fan of the original film, I thought it was fine enough but really just another horror film but when it was announced that Mr Hamill was going to voice Chucky this time around I instantly had a change of heart and wanted to see this movie.

And I am very glad I did as I had a great time watching it in the cinema on a dark Friday night and firstly Bear McCreary’s Score is really good and adds a lot to the atmosphere and tension of the movie plus the Buddi song that plays throughout the film is a lot of fun and great to listen to.

Also the films performances are also very good, young Mr Bateman is very good as Andy and throughout the film when he was on screen I was reminded a little bit of Eddie Furlong from Terminator 2, Ms Plaza is also good as Andy’s Mum while Brian Tyree Henry is also good as the police detective who lives down the hall.

But the show stealer here is Mr Hamill, his voice work switches from being friendly like “Your my Best Friend” to evil and “If they don’t let us play, they all go away” on a dime and its great to watch and listen to and it put a big smile on my face as it felt like I could have fun watching a horror film character much like I did James McAvoy in Split and Glass whereas I feel with a lot of horror films these days its hard to have that dark twisted fun with them as they either go for the endless quick cuts, loud noises and jump scares and/or take themselves so seriously that I just get bored with them.

And lastly the film has some great horror violence kills, the film is rated MA15+ here in Australia for a reason and there is plenty of tense and bloody violence that again really appealed to me and thankfully I wasn’t having to sit through these endless quick cuts, jump scares and loud noises on the sound mix, there’s proper buildup and tension to the kills here and it makes a big difference at least for me.

And so that was Childs Play and if you had said to me at the beginning of 2019 that this would be one of the most fun times I had at a cinema this year I would’ve said “Yeah Right” but here we are, 3 and a half out of 5.