Though director John Lafia, cowriter of the original Child’s Play script, attempts to maintain the intensity of the film’s predecessor, Child’s Play 2 is marred by repetition, a gross of cinematic oversights, and the director’s preoccupation with his antagonist as he spends most of the film focusing upon Chucky and not the horror which the character provokes. In short, Child’s Play 2 is a vastly inferior remake of Tom Holland’s original frightfest.
After his mother has been committed to a mental institution, Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) is placed in a foster home owned by Phil and Joanne Simpson (Gerrit Graham and Jenny Agutter respectively) as the Play Pals line of Good Guys dolls is reintroduced in an attempt by the company to disprove the allegations from Barclay and his mother that the toy is dangerous. However, the first doll off the assembly line contains the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif). Ray, back in his doppelganger form as Chucky, begins to pursue Andy in order to transfer his soul into a human body amid resuming his mass slayings.
As Wes Craven’s Scream 2 satirically cites, a horror sequel proper repeats what occurred in the original, all to grandiose effect, while doubling the deaths but all to nil as the successor is predestined to vainglorious failure. Child’s Play 2 is the penultimate example of this as we watch as Chucky bites a victim, knocks a character unconscious, and stabs legs as he did in the original. He does divert from strangulation to suffocation but, I argue, this would be the one instance when redundancy would be permissible, and almost mandatory, considering that Charles Lee Ray was known as the Lakeside Strangler.
The primary power of Holland’s direction in the original is due to restraint and omission as we watch the characters’ reactions to the doll, all from the POV of the killer. However, Lafia unfortunately turns the camera around as we are given scene after scene of Chucky as the tension is bypassed while the director is consumed by his financial freedom to present Chucky in all of his animatronic glory. This preoccupation regrettably extends outward as the mythos of the character is lost while the character’s Achilles’s heal (his heart) is forgotten by the film’s climax. Furthermore, insinuation is posited yet never addressed or justified once it has been superceded. Case in point, during the film’s opening sequence, we are given to anticipate that the nearly omnipotent antagonist in the original will be manifold (i.e. Ridley Scott’s Alien to James Cameron’s Aliens) when a vat of boiling plastic is laced with the blood of the previous cavity which housed Ray’s soul. We eagerly await many Chuckies running amuck. Yet, when a single doll appears with the essence of the serial killer encased inside, one must pause and accept the fact, however begrudgingly, that unless an entire vat of plastic results in the production of only one doll, that the coincidental nature of the diluted blood inside the cooking chemicals just happened to realign itself at the moment of casting. Of course, all of this says nothing of the fact that we are never given a reason for the killer’s regeneration after the protagonists of the original went to great lengths to bring a definitive end to their demonic nemesis.
Interestingly, Lafia’s film also imitates Holland’s in that, very sparingly, satirical moments are presented and remain isolated as they are never permitted to culminate into a resounding, effectual whole. For example, the foster family’s surname is “Simpson,” thus we are welcomed into the home of the ever popular Simpsons, and, echoing Chucky’s genesis as a My Buddy doll, the film’s climax recalls the popular, risqué trading card line during the period entitled “Garbage Pail Kids,” as Chucky comes to resemble the trademark character of titular line.
Indifferently, Graeme Revell’s score is plagiaristically reminiscent of the music of the A Nightmare on Elm Street Series. Yet, to the film’s discredit, like many of the Freddy films, Lafia’s work is visually very dated as it focuses more on the highly specific environment of the Simpson household as well as the wardrobe of the characters, the most passé of which appears on Andy’s adopted sister, Kyle (Christine Elise).
The most scarring repercussion of the production’s exponential increase in budget is witnessed in the film’s candidacy for “Movie Which Houses the Grossest Amount of Continuity Errors and Editing Board Oversights,” which includes crew and/or equipment being readily visible, unsynchronized audio and visual components, and various other blaring cinematic mishaps en masse throughout.
John Lafia’s follow-up to the surprisingly effective introduction of Chucky in Tom Holland’s Child’s Play is a poor successor in most every respect. It seems as if the director conceded to placating audience demand, not for an effective, taut horror film, but a movie which gratuitously presents the killer, not necessarily in all his glory, but whenever possible, thus diluting the potency of the villain as a result. As a consequence of the inflated budget, Lafia was allowed to issue a more lifelike antagonist whom he refused to take the camera’s lens away from as error upon distracting error was committed as the crew continued to be, likewise, consumed by the image of the doll killer.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
