Seed Of Chucky (2004)
Dir. and Written by Don Mancini
Starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy
Boyd, Redman, Hannah Spearritt
So, the last time we
fucked with the Chuck was waaaay back in, holy cow, 2013! I recall promising at
the time I’d do the whole series. I promise a lot of things. But for some
reason I didn’t and then almost half a decade went by, and everything got way different.
Worse, let’s go ahead and say. 2013 was a simpler time, when the phrase
“President Donald Trump” would have made you think, “oh, did that old has-been
flim-flammer buy a wig company and install himself as president? Why are people
still paying attention to him, again?”
But like Trump, Chucky
just won’t go away, even when it becomes obvious he probably
should. One opportunity to hang up his little doll boots would have been after
the original CHILD’S PLAY proved, against all odds, to
actually be a solid, creepy little thriller. Another would have been after CHILD’S PLAY2 turned out to be a lazy,
half-thought-through retread moderately redeemed by a cool finale, and another
would have been after CHILD’S PLAY 3 was an even MORE lazy,
half-thought-through retread without even the benefit of a cool climax. And an
even better time would have been after the 1998 meta-comedy revival, BRIDE OF CHUCKY, was somehow, against even more
all odds, also sort of semi-charming. I mean, what were the chances they were
gonna pull that off again?
But, for good or ill,
Chucky franchise steward Don Mancini (starting as a co-writer in CHILD’S PLAY
but by SEED graduating to writer/director/executive producer) really got stuck on
this concept, to such an extent that the solitary non-Chucky thing I have ever
seen him do professionally since CHILD’S PLAY is... judge a Food Network Halloween-themed
novelty cake-baking contest.* Granted, judging elaborately, impractically
decorated cake versions of famous movie monsters is a totally different
skillset from writing a CHILD’S PLAY movie, so hats off to him, his Renaissance
man bonafides are now firmly established. But still, the guy’s been riding the
Chucky train almost non-stop for 30 years now, since he was a
spry 25-year old. That’s commitment. (In fact, mere minutes before posting
this, I just saw a news alert claiming he’s in the process of creating a Chucky
TV series. The man is a fucking machine).
That kind of borderline
psychotic fixation was definitely a requirement for making SEED OF CHUCKY,
because let’s be real, BRIDE OF CHUCKY was an order of
magnitude better than you’d have any legitimate reason to hope from a 1990’s
meta-comedy franchise reboot... and it was still just OK. I
gave it a solidly positive review back in 2013, but you’ll notice even I didn’t
exactly rush out and pick up the sequel, and I’m pretty much the target
demographic here. And this is a sequel six years after that, in
2004, another era which was not exactly kind to horror movies. 1998 --still
basking in SCREAM’s meta-horror afterglow-- at least provided a cinematic
landscape where a comedy re-imagining made sense. By 2004, though, we’d
embraced gloomy, ultra-serious J-horror remakes and were poised right at the
edge of the torture-porn epidemic. Other horror movies that year included Zack
Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, the American GRUDGE remake, RESIDENT EVIL:
APOCALYPSE (which remains the single worst film I’ve ever watched all the way
through in a theater), the first SAW, DEADBIRDS, M. Night Shyamalan's THE VILLAGE, THE
EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING. Fucking GODSEND, for heaven’s sake.** Not a lot of
laffs there.***
So in summary, this is a
way-too-late sequel to a reboot of a distinctly second-tier 80’s gimmick
slasher franchise which was released at a moment when it could hardly be more
out of touch with the current trends. It was, in short, a terrible idea. But
some muthafucker’s always trying to ice skate uphill, and to his credit,
Mancini seems to have been aware that the only way to do this is to make up in moxie
what the concept lacks in judgement. I congratulated BRIDE for embracing its
own ridiculousness and letting it all hang out, but SEED goes way beyond that,
stubbornly pushing past its predecessors’ already lax sense of logic and good
taste, and brazenly marching the series in some… I don’t know if bold is
exactly the word I’m searching for, but definitely weird directions.
See,
Mancini seems to believe that if BRIDE OF CHUCKY succeeded by being a
tongue-in-cheek meta take on CHILD’S PLAY, the only direction to go is deeper
into wacky postmodernism, so SEED OF CHUCKY is sort of a tongue-in-cheek meta
take on BRIDE OF CHUCKY, gallantly throwing caution and basic narrative
structure to the wind and presenting a world wherein BRIDE OF CHUCKY actress
Jennifer Tilly is playing… BRIDE OF CHUCKY actress Jennifer Tilly, but somehow
also the events of BRIDE OF CHUCKY also more or less happened in real life.
There’s a cameo from red-hot ripped-from-the-headlines actor Jason Flemyng
(“Lobby Goon,” KICK-ASS), who is starring in a movie-within-a-movie Christmas-themed
CHUCKY sequel which would probably have been a better idea than this movie,
right off the bat. Isn’t that hilarious, that in this Chucky movie, they make
fun of how low-rent Chucky movies are? So it’s gonna be that kind of party.
We’ll
get back to Jennifer Tilly in a bit, but first, the movie actually begins with
something you’d think (and the poster implies) would happen only at the end, if
at all. It seems the eyebrow-raising doll-on-doll sex scene from BRIDE OF
CHUCKY took, because we begin with what can only have been the result of that
unholy union: an unfortunate young doll named Glen (voiced by Billy Boyd, just
a scant two years after his tenure in the Best-picture winning RETURN OF THE
KING). Glen is an ambiguously gendered, sweet-natured doll with a tendency to
pee himself at the first sign of conflict, which the movie seems to think is
the most hilarious thing that has ever happened and well worth returning to for
what feel like about five dozen callbacks. So you can guess how well things go
for him when he unwisely uses voodoo to revive his parents, who he’s never met
but identifies from a TV making-of featurette that finds Jennifer Tilly talking
about the CHUCKY series. The logic of how all this fits into the continuity is
a little hazy, but dude, we’re in a movie with a sentient, anatomically neutral
doll that somehow manages to pee itself. If that’s gonna be the thing you can’t
get past, this is going to go very badly for you.
Anyway,
a revived Chucky and Tiffany (both still in doll form) don’t seem especially
curious about the how’s and why’s of this either. Chucky is cheered by the idea
of having a son to assist him and carry on his murderous work, but Tiffany,
feeling some maternal responsibility, decides she wants to raise him in a
slightly less homicidal manner, regardless of her own murderous inclination.
Besides, while Chucky has now apparently found peace with the idea of being a
killer doll, Tiffany would like a human body… and she sets her sights on
beloved Hollywood superstar and World Series of Poker winner Jennifer Tilly.
So, much of the movie is about Tiffany stalking Tilly, while the unwitting
actress in busy trying to seduce big-time Hollywood director and Wu-block
affiliate**** Redman (HOW HIGH) into casting her as Mary H. Christ in his
upcoming Bible epic. Also Tiffany wants to take Glen’s soul and put it in the
body of a human baby, but since she wants to be in Jennifer Tilly’s body, that
means she has to get her pregnant with Chucky’s child without arousing the
actress’s suspicions. And there’s a sleazy tabloid paparazzo (John Waters[!?])
who’s beginning to pick up on something being amiss at Miss Tilly’s classic
Hollywood palatial mansion. And also, the emotional strain of being pulled in
two directions by Chucky and Tiffany is causing Glen’s latent maniacal
tendencies (and gender confusion*****) to reach something of a boiling point.
Got
all that? No? That’s OK, I don’t think Mancini really does either, and the
result is a movie which is narratively kind of a shapeless heap of ideas that
tend to compete with each other for prominence instead of building to a
cohesive whole. It wants to do everything, and consequently succeeds at doing
not very much at all. It’s a silly, amiable extension of the somewhat silly,
amiable BRIDE OF CHUCKY, but it definitely proves that you can have too much of
a good thing. Which is not to say it’s a complete wash, by any means. It’s
likeable enough to draw some consistent chuckles, and very occasionally clever
in its postmodern meta high-wire act (Tilly, anyway, is obviously having a lot
of fun playing the shallow, SUNSET BOULEVARD version of herself and the
star-struck killer doll stalking her, even if it’s probably more amusing in
concept than in execution.)
But I can’t help but
notice it continues to neglect the real genre goods. BRIDE was already drifting
away from any pretense of suspense, or even “good kills,” but SEED is even more
enamoured with the idea of itself as a cheeky sendup, rarely even makes a
gesture towards any clearly identifiable horror, even the schlocky, gorey stuff
you would reasonably expect from a killer doll movie. I’m not looking for THE
SHINING here, but come on, this is way too much plot to offer such mild
payoffs. In particular, Chucky himself is really sidelined by Tiffany and Glen.
Three’s a crowd, and with a plot this scatterbrained they end up kinda
competing with each other for your attention. Mancini, who obviously took the precaution of travelling forward
in time to read the suggestion in my BRIDE OF CHUCKY review that they ditch the
boring “A” plot with Katherine Heigl and focus on the Chuck, does
exactly that in SEED: the dolls are the main characters and the stars of the
film, without any real competition. But it turns out not to work much better.
Oops, sorry about that, Don. My bad.
For the story to
function, Chucky needs to have conflict, but turning the antagonists of the
previous films into a bickering family sitcom straitjackets the movie’s
anarchic impulses and reduces the Chuck to a supporting character in his own
movie. When you come right down to it, Tiff is actually the more interesting
character anyway; Chucky’s needs and wants are fairly straightforward, so
bringing Tiffany to the forefront gives the movie a pathos and structure it
probably needed. But come on man, who’s name is on the marquee here? Setting
Chucky as the main character isn’t going to work, but shifting him to a back
burner is losing focus on what we came to do here in the first place. So fuck
it. A movie that spends this much time and energy trying to contain Chucky’s
homicidal glee is a movie which has postmodern’d itself right out of its own
reason for existing.
Openly lacking much
interest in horror, Mancini instead seems to be shooting for camp, which is
usually a bad bet. You can’t force camp. Camp comes unbidden. Camp just
happens. Putting John Waters in your movie is certainly a good thing to do, and
I urge future filmmakers to do it more, but it’s not quite the same thing. SEED
OF CHUCKY is… tasteless, sure (especially looking back from a more enlightened
day and age, when the idea of surreptitiously impregnating actress Jennifer
Tilly without her knowledge or consent, or forcing her to have sex with a
sleazy Hollywood director in exchange for a good role, doesn’t quite scan with
the ‘ain’t I a stinker!’ charm the movie suggests it ought). But true camp
alludes it. It references camp; it’s adjacent to camp. But such is the bitter
irony of camp: if you’re self-aware enough to try for camp, it will always
elude you.
So it doesn’t quite cut
it as camp, it's too plotty for empty-headed schlock, it's too mild-mannered to coast on shock (its most subversive idea is a masturbating doll, and even that only in the Unrated version), it’s got zero interest in being scary, and
doesn’t even offer a whole lot of gore (there are only two or three “good
kills” anywhere in sight, and none of them are real showstoppers). Since that doesn't really leave you with a lot to hang on to, there's a good bit of down time to notice two surprising things SEED reveals about
Mancini in his directorial debut: he has an unexpectedly excellent eye for
image, and a relatively weak sense for comic editing. I’ll lead with the more
positive of those two observations. While any horror that occurs here is
practically incidental, Mancini and cinematographer Vernon Layton (THE
ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL AND CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN) turn out to have a real
fetish for the icons of classic Hollywood gothic horror, and a solid aptitude
for visually recapturing them (or at least paying tribute to them).
Consequently, for no narrative reason, they cram in plenty of spooky attics and
spider webs and so forth, as well as beautifully framed eerie mansions which
always seem to be slightly off-kilter, and even a nice-looking visual reference
to PSYCHO (which, as an added bonus, turns out to make narrative sense)! Of course,
if the Chucky series is anything, it’s a gimmick slasher, and
consequently dumping a bunch of slasher tropes on top of its aspirations
towards an old-school gothic aesthetic just creates yet another awkward
mish-mash of tones and aspirations. But at least it looks nice.
 |
| On the other hand, who can stay mad at a movie which brought these two together? |
That’s a pleasant
surprise, but it’s weighed down by some very awkward timing. For this
deficiency we probably ought to assign some blame to, haha, Academy-Award
winning editor Chris Dickens (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE), except that his deft work
on SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ (and hopefully the upcoming SOLO: AN UNASKED
FOR STAR WARS STORY) aptly demonstrates his excellent sense of
comic timing and deft hand at grappling competing tones. So I think it must be
Mancini himself who is responsible for the draggy feel which persists
intermittently throughout the film, never grinding things entirely to a halt,
but also ensuring that this frothy nothing of a plot never feels quite as
energetic and light on its feet as it needs to.
Part of the problem
may be purely practical; I have a suspicion that the dolls have to talk kind of
slow for their mouths to work right. That was never a problem when Chucky was
still a villain, as it meant Brad Dourif (hey, I just realized he and Boyd are
both LotR alums!) could drag out his loungy Nicholson-eque menace. But with
most of the malicious threat replaced by a family sitcom about killer dolls,
any flagging in the energy really drains the bite from the semi-comedic
bickering which the movie is banking on. Comic banter is a tough thing to get
right in any scenario, and tends to rely on punchy liveliness (especially since
the writing ain’t exactly Oscar Wilde). A bit of manic exuberance might have
papered that over enough to get by, but somebody -- either the director, the
actors, or the puppeteers -- can’t seem to conjure it, and the result is never
as funny as it needs to be.
Worse still, Mancini
lets scenes play out waaay longer than he needs to get the goods from them --
the worst offender being the final coda, which stretches what ought to have
been a 30-second sting into a languid five-minute grind (actually it looks like
this is only in the “extended edition” but still). He also has a habit of
wasting time with needless, unentertaining characters like Tilly's bland limo
driver (Steve West, Not Porn [TV movie]******) who does not need
20 minutes of introduction in order to be unmemorable body count, and a soon-to-be-Halloran’d personal assistant (Hannah Spearritt, the most undeservedly brutalized personal assistant til that poor young woman from JURASSIC WORLD) who ends up with a positively scandalous amount of screen time considering how little she ends up having to do with anything. This dead weight lards up the film and makes
it stretch your goodwill more than it really has the goods to get away with.
Other things, like Waters’ abbreviated arc as a sleazy poperatzo (he’s a
delight), or the suggestion of a doll-on-doll karate fight (because... Japan?)
actually cry out for more time to develop, but seem oddly
truncated before they can build momentum.
All that adds up to a
movie which is hard to justify recommending, except as an odd novelty. But for
all that, I also find it hard to entirely condemn something so silly and eager
to please. I mean, it’s annoying that Redman playing himself as a sleazy
Hollywood director of a Biblical epic doesn’t end up being funnier than this,
but on the other hand, the idea is funny enough to go a long way on its own.
And come on, what other movie is going to try it? That pretty much sums up up
the whole experience. There’s a lot to like in concept, but not so much in
execution. But still, a fun concept is a fun concept, and I’ll take those where
I can get ‘em. I’d prefer a better version of all of this, but a world with a
not-quite-successful movie this weird is certainly better than a world with
none at all.
The Chucky's Play
Series:
- CHILD’S PLAY
- CHILD’S PLAY 2
- CHILD’S PLAY 3
- BRIDE OF CHUCKY
- SEED
OF CHUCKY
- CURSE
OF CHUCKY
- CULT
OF CHUCKY
*That isn’t entirely fair, it
seems; he also wrote an episode of Tales From The Crypt and
recently worked as a producer and writer on the TV series Hannibal and Channel
Zero. And he wrote CELLAR DWELLER, but that was under a pseudonym
and also before CHILD’S PLAY. He also appeared on something called “SexTV,” as
“himself,” in an otherwise unspecified capacity, according to wikipedia.
** Also, somehow both GINGER SNAPS: 2 and GINGER
SNAPS BACK. Asian horror was still riding high, with SHUTTER, PREMONITION, 3
EXTREMES and MAREBITO released that year, but America was only barely aware
of that.
*** OK, SHAUN OF THE DEAD. And CLUB DREAD. And
VAN HELSING, but still.
**** Or apparently he’s a full-fledged member? He said so in 2010, anyway. I sure don’t see
him turn up on their albums very much. Oh, OK, looks like RZA walked that back a bit later.
***** My apologies if that term is considered
tantamount to genocide by the time you read this in 2049. I’m trying to be
sensitive here but this movie doesn’t exactly give me a lot of room for
empathetic nuance about constrictive gender norms. Would it help if I told you
Don Mancini is openly gay?
****** Methinks it doth protest too much.
CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017
CHECKLIST!
The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree
TAGLINE
|
They unwisely wasted “Chucky Gets Lucky” on
the last sequel, but they still got a few good ones: Deliver Us Some Evil,
Time To Raise Some Hell, Fear The Second Coming (?).
|
TITLE ACCURACY
|
Sure
|
LITERARY ADAPTATION?
|
No
|
SEQUEL?
|
Yes, #5 of, good lord, 7 movies.
|
REMAKE?
|
No
|
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
|
USA
|
HORROR SUB-GENRE
|
Killer doll, horror-comedy, meta-comedy,
psychological horror
|
SLUMMING A-LISTER?
|
Jennifer Tilly? John Waters? Jason Flemyng??
|
BELOVED HORROR ICON?
|
Chucky! And also this is as good a time as any
to mention that Pino Donaggio did the score.
|
NUDITY?
|
Yes, at least in the “Extended edition”
there’s a shower scene stuck at the opening. There’s also doll boobs, so you
fans of HOWARD THE DUCK, prick up your ears.
|
SEXUAL ASSAULT?
|
They play it lightly, but there’s definitely a
(doll) woman-on-woman forced impregnation, and the bits with Redman being a
cad and pushing Tilly’s head into his lap and such seem decidedly cringy and
unfunny today (it doesn’t help that they’re just kinda awkward and unfunny
even absent the ethical unpleasantness). Boy, how far we’ve come even since
the early 2000’s!
|
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!
|
None
|
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?
|
None, though Voodoo is again mentioned
|
POSSESSION?
|
Yep
|
CREEPY DOLLS?
|
Well, that’s pretty much the whole thing
|
EVIL CULT?
|
No, although I notice the new sequel, which I
haven’t seen yet, is called CULT OF CHUCKY
|
MADNESS?
|
Oh yeah
|
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?
|
(spoiler) Glen to Glenda!
|
VOYEURISM?
|
Starts with a long first-person kill sequence
|
MORAL OF THE STORY
|
Never meta the meta, dude! It’s like crossing
the streams.
|
