Director Jack Bender’s third installment in the Child’s Play series is a lukewarm production at best as he compromises the effectiveness of his predecessors, making a blatant, clichéd teen slasher targeted specifically at adolescents. However, by setting the film in an anxiety-ladden environment, he compounds the viewer’s apprehension as Chucky is complimented by a human antagonist yet, by inserting a romantic subplot, Child’s Play 3 relegates itself back into the category of mediocre as a consequence.
Eight years after his last encounter with his childhood nemesis–the reincarnated Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) in the form of the evil Good Guy doll, Chucky–Andy Barclay (Justin Whalin) is relocated to Kent Military School. As the young man attempts to adjust to military life under a tyrannical cadet, Lieutenant Colonel Brett Shelton (Travis Fine), the Play Pals corporation decides that the bad publicity from their doll line has dissipated to the point where they can safely revive the toy once more. The factory, in their recycling of old materials, brings forth the spirit of Ray once again as it is transferred into another Good Guy. In Chucky’s search for Andy in order to reclaim human form, he discovers that he no longer has to depend upon the teenager and, instead, opts for a more naïve victim, Private Ronald Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers). Andy quickly discovers Chucky’s intent and sets out to save the young child.
The most apparent difference with Bender’s vision of horror in contrast to forerunners is that Chucky’s victims are primarily the same age as the genre’s demographic: teenagers. Thus, we are transported from a mature, somewhat challenging horror milieu, to that of a more mainstream and all-too-coincidental scenario that is further dissipated by the inclusion of a subplot romance between Andy and another cadet, Kristen De Silva (Perrey Reeves).
Yet, as we find our main character of the previous two films, Andy, now a young man, entering a military academy (bothersome in its effigetic echoes of Don Taylor’s Damien: Omen II), it becomes apparent that Bender has an ace up his sleeve. When Commanding Officer Shelton first appears onscreen, the muscles in our back tense up as he shouts his mocking condescensions to one and all. Thus, for the astute viewer, an approving nod is in order because, even though Chucky has yet to appear, in military tradition, we fear submitting a stress card for fear of being reprimanded for lack of spine. Obviously, the figure of Shelton is meant to compliment the killer doll but they share equal weight during the film’s duration in torturing Andy, all to stress-inducing effect. Not only do the villainous characters feed off of one another but, once Chucky does make his way to the academy, we grimace–not of the killer doll’s actions–but rather at the thought that he will exacerbate matters for those in the academy, thus prompting Shelton’s wrath.
The power of the character of Shelton is due to Fine’s admirable performance. This is in direct contrast to Sylvers’s excessively annoying screen presence which, unlike his child precursor in the series, Alex Vincent, reestablishes viewer apprehension when a child appears within the frames of a horror film. Furthermore, the effectiveness, not only of the Commanding Officer’s leering presence, but of the entire production, is due largely to the horrific editing sensibilities of Scott Wallace and Edward Warschilka (the latter being editor on many John Carpenter projects) as they poignantly cut between duel plots while shortening their transition time gradually before revealing the nerve-wracking punch line of each sequence, thus compounding the intensity of the climax twofold by unveiling them successively.
Like John Lafia’s Child’s Play 2, Bender’s film follows the horror stigma of repeating the original’s formula to a lesser effect. As such, we watch as Chucky once again knocks out a victim, resorts to strangulation, and stabs legs (though he restrains from biting anyone this go around). And, as an apparent requisite for any horror successor, we have the blaring non sequitur, in this case of how Chucky mails himself to Kent in a perfectly wrapped package even though he is the parcel’s contents. Also, we are presented with the convenient divergence from the character’s mythos that Chucky must hunt down Andy specifically in order to transfer his soul into that of a human (making his efforts in Lafia’s film posited in vain). Instead, the addendum is given that Chucky merely need divulge his secret to his chosen host after each reemergence. Lastly, in keeping with franchise tradition, the film houses, perhaps in proportion to the diminution of the series’ effectiveness, only one instance of isolated, undeveloped satire as Sullivan (Peter Haskell), the head of the company responsible for Play Pals, states he doesn’t care what the product is, be it “cars, nuclear weapons, or dolls” just so long as it makes a profit.
Jack Bender’s production had the capacity to create a taut, effective thriller with his inclusion of a mortal counterpart to the figure of Chucky, not in the character’s modus operandi, but happenstance dislike for the central character. Unfortunately, Child’s Play 3 becomes unnecessarily convoluted with the inclusion of a romantic subplot atop a distracting performance by Jeremy Sylvers. As a consequence, Bender’s film stands as a merely competent, if somewhat downplayed and trite, addition to the legacy of Chucky.
Note: Since this ends the formal series involving the explicitly “terrorizing” (verses “comical”) figure of Chucky, I will note that as such, the brief installments involving the doll killer are, when averaged, more succinct, controlled, and effective as a whole than most of Chucky’s horror contemporaries (that is, as strict horror–the series offers little in relation to overall cinematic worth outside of sparse satirical glimpses at society). As a trilogy, Child’s Play stands are one of the most notable horror collections of the late twentieth century.
-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
