Child's Play (2019 film)


Child's Play is a 2019 horror film written by Tyler Burton Smith and directed by Lars Klevberg. A remake of the 1988 film of the same name and a reboot of the Child's Play franchise, it follows a family terrorized by a high-tech doll who becomes self-aware and subsequently murderous. The film stars Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, Tim Matheson, David Lewis and Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky. It is an international co-production of the United States and Canada.
The development of a Child's Play remake was announced in July 2018. Klevberg signed on as director from a script by Burton Smith, saying in an interview he drew inspiration from the 1982 science fiction film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Principal photography lasted from September to November 2018 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Child's Play was theatrically released in the United States on June 21, 2019, by Orion Pictures through United Artists Releasing. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $44 million worldwide against a $10 million budget.

Plot

The multinational Kaslan Corporation has just launched Buddi, a revolutionary line of high-tech dolls designed to be life-long companions to their owners, learning from their surroundings, and acting accordingly, quickly becoming a success for children worldwide. At an assembly factory in Vietnam, an employee is fired by his supervisor for insufficient work. In retaliation, the employee manipulates the Buddi doll that he is assembling by disabling all of its safety protocols, before committing suicide. The doll is packed alongside others in preparation for international delivery.
In Chicago, Illinois, retail clerk Karen Barclay and her 13-year-old hearing-impaired son, Andy, have moved into their new apartment. In an attempt to cheer Andy up and make up for the unease caused by the relocation and her new boyfriend Shane, Karen blackmails her boss, Wes, in order to procure a defective Buddi doll, giving it to Andy as an early birthday gift. Once Andy activates the doll, he names himself "Chucky" and becomes attached to his owner. Over time, Chucky helps Andy befriend two other kids in the building — Falyn and Pugg — but also begins to display violent tendencies. For instance, he tries to strangle the Barclays' pet cat after it scratches Andy, and one night, while he and his friends gleefully watch a horror film, Chucky starts mimicking the violence on the screen and approaches the trio with a kitchen knife before Andy disarms him.
The next morning, Andy arrives home to find that his cat is dead; Chucky admits to having killed it so that it would not hurt him anymore. Karen locks the doll in a closet, but he escapes and terrorizes Shane, which leads him to confront Andy. After overhearing Andy's pleas for Shane to disappear, Chucky follows him home, where it is revealed that Shane has a family and has been having an affair with Karen behind his wife's back. While Shane is outside taking down Christmas lights, Chucky breaks his legs and activates a tiller that scalps and kills him. The following day, Chucky delivers Shane's skinned face as a gift to a horrified Andy.
While police detective Mike Norris and his partner Willis begin an investigation, Andy, Falyn and Pugg disable Chucky and throw him in the garbage. Building voyeur and electrician Gabe finds the doll and takes him to the basement to prepare him for an online sale. Now fully repaired, Chucky tortures and murders Gabe with a table saw. After making his way back to the ground level, Chucky lands in possession of another kid named Omar and proceeds to kill Norris' mother, Doreen, in a controlled car crash. Meanwhile, Andy fails to convince Karen that the doll has become murderous, and she takes Andy along to her next shift work at the local shopping mall to keep him nearby.
Suspecting that Andy is the killer, Norris travels to the mall and apprehends him just as Chucky takes full control of the building. Chaos is unleashed as several employees and customers are brutally killed by rampaging Buddi dolls while Chucky triggers the mall's lockdown sequence. Amid the massacre, Wes is murdered, Norris is wounded, and Andy and his friends manage to reach the exit, only for Andy to be forced to return when Chucky reveals that he is holding Karen hostage, intending to kill her. Andy manages to free his mother while being attacked by Chucky, before stabbing the doll in his power cell, deactivating him. While paramedics tend to Karen, Norris, and other survivors outside the mall, the kids destroy and burn Chucky's body in a nearby alleyway.
In the aftermath of Chucky's killing spree, Kaslan Corporation CEO Henry Kaslan issues a statement regarding Chucky's programming, announcing a massive Buddi dolls recall. As one of the dolls is being placed into storage, its eyes flicker red and smiles, revealing that Chucky transferred his A. I. awareness into a new doll.

Cast

On July 3, 2018, it was announced that a Child's Play remake was in development at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a different creative team than the original film series. Lars Klevberg signed on as director, with a script by Tyler Burton Smith. It and It Chapter Two collaborative team Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg served as producers. In September 2018, Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plaza, and Brian Tyree Henry were set to star. In November 2018, Ty Consiglio and Beatrice Kitsos joined the cast.
Principal photography began on September 17 and wrapped on November 8, 2018, in Vancouver, Canada. Reshoots occurred on December 15–16 and in April 2019. MastersFX, a visual effects company, took six weeks to prepare and assemble seven practical animatronic puppets, each with interchangeable arms and heads that performed a variety of required actions on set, with some help from Pixomondo, who provided the CGI for the film. Bear McCreary composed the score through a "toy orchestra" inspired by "Chucky's toy-store origins" with toy pianos, hurdy-gurdies, accordions, plastic guitars and otamatones.
In March 2019, actor Mark Hamill announced that he joined the cast to voice Chucky in the film. Grahame-Smith elaborated on Hamill's casting in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying:

Marketing

The first official image of Chucky was released on September 21, 2018. The teaser poster was released on November 12, 2018, revealing that for the film's adaptation the Good Guys dolls would be called Buddi, referencing the My Buddy doll that influenced the original character's design. A WiFi symbol over the "i" in "Buddi" teases the character's hi-tech functions, being similar to robot toys, such as Furby and RoboSapien. Orion Pictures launched a marketing website for the fictional Kaslan Corporation, ahead of the film's release. The first trailer premiered on February 8, 2019, with the release of The Prodigy.
The film's theatrical poster was released on April 17, 2019 and the second trailer on April 18, 2019. On May 16, 2019, a behind-the-scenes video was uploaded to Orion Pictures' YouTube channel, which shows how Chucky was brought to life for the film. Beginning April 2019, several posters alluding to Toy Story 4 were released, featuring Chucky brutally killing characters of the animated franchise, using the Toy Story 4's teaser posters' background. Both films had June 21, 2019 releases. On June 24, a poster was unveiled to coincide with the impending release of Annabelle Comes Home, altering one of that film's posters to imply Chucky's attack on the Annabelle doll.

Release

The film was released in the United States on June 21, 2019. It is the first film from Orion Pictures to be released through United Artists Releasing.
The film was released digitally on September 10, 2019 and on Blu-ray and DVD on September 24, 2019 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Reception

Box office

Child's Play grossed $29.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $15.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $44.9 million, against a production budget of $10 million.
In the United States and Canada, Child's Play was released alongside Toy Story 4 and Anna, and was projected to gross $16–18 million from 3,007 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $6.1 million on its first day, including $1.65 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $14.1 million, and finishing second, behind Toy Story 4. The film dropped 68.6% in its second weekend to $4.4 million, falling to eighth.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 196 reviews, with an average rating of 5.78/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Child's Play updates an '80s horror icon for the Internet of Things era, with predictably gruesome – and generally entertaining – results." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, the lowest score of the series.
Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "nastier, more playful, and just as good if not better than the original film." Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian gave the film a positive review, with 4/5 stars, calling it a "Chilrazor-sharp and exquisitely gruesome toy story". Jeremy Dick from MovieWeb also liked the film, writing "Child's Play is the perfect horror movie remake and should now serve as a prime example of what others should do. It's highly entertaining and tons of fun, and I say that as a huge fan of the original."
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, writing, "MIA is the original's perverse originality... in a misguided satire of the digital era and millennial consumerism". Varietys Peter Debruge was also negative, stating, "This is the new normal for horror movies: The screenplays have to seem hipper than the premise they represent, which puts Child's Play in the weird position of pointing out and poking fun at all the ways it fails to make sense."

Future

At WonderCon, Grahame-Smith said that if the film does well, they would love to make a sequel. Director Lars Klevberg discussed his ideas for a possible sequel: "For me, this was just trying to make this the best movie possible. Like, never foreshadowing any detailed plan of where you want to go as a franchise. But yeah, for me I think I love the Buddi bear concept."