Child’s Play (Tom Holland, 1988)

Wait a minute... he's not a good guy at all!

Watching Child’s Play for the first time in my forties was like discovering a long-lost X-Files episode I’d somehow missed. Everything about the film — from the very hokey-cum-serious central concept itself to the entire mise-en-scène of the production — just screamed classic X-Files to me.

The inclusion of Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif) himself as the killer criminal who is reincarnated as a doll was just the cherry on top. From there, it’s a small hop, skip, and a jump to Fox Mulder suggesting someone check the back of Chucky for a plastic ring with a string on it.

I’m straying way off track already, I know, but I think this context is important upfront because I was a huge X-Files fan growing up. I still am. And Child’s Play really does hit all the notes that made that show so incredibly special to me.

So yes, I loved this movie.

The plot, in a nutshell, is that a serial killer transfers his soul into the must-have toy of the season by the use of voodoo mysticism and, I dunno, the power of lightning, I guess.

The point is: psychopathic doll.

Enter little Andy. He’s obsessed with the naff kids TV show Good Guys for some reason and, even more incredibly, he’s not alone. The cartoon is wildly popular. So popular, in fact, that the show’s merch is harder for parents to get their hands on than a Turbo Man, and especially if your only parent is a single mom who works in retail for a grouchy boss.

As luck would have it, however, when murderer Charles Lee Ray was gunned down by police in a local toy shop, much of the damaged stock was discarded. Which means Andy’s mom, Karen, is suddenly able to buy a salvaged Good Guys doll from her friendly neighborhood peddler.

But wouldn’t you know it? That discount toy is the exact same one that Charles transferred his spirit into after being shot down by the cops. And now Karen is, essentially, taking a deranged psychopath home to sleep in the same bed as her six-year-old son.

It sounds peculiar, but it’s a whole lot of fun.

Cue all the standard spooky doll mayhem: Andy talks to Chucky like he’s real and insists that Chucky talks back, the TV mysteriously turns on while only Chucky is in the room, Chucky changes location even no-one moved him… You get the picture.

Soon enough, Chucky starts killing unsuspecting adults, enacting revenge on those who wronged him in life, and concocting a plan to transfer his soul out of the doll and into a human… These kind of movies tend to suffer when trying to contort themselves to accommodate pretzel logic of how supernatural things happen, so the good news is that Child’s Play doesn’t get too in the weeds here. Charles had a voodoo instructor who basically exists to provide exposition to escalate the stakes. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

What we really care about is the promised horror fun, and Chucky delivers — although it’s nowhere nearly as gnarly as I’d expected it would be, having been aware of the film but never actually embracing it until now. I’m glad I finally did. And even gladder that there’s a whole slew of sequels and a TV show I get to explore…