Film Review: Living With Chucky (2022)
Cinedigm
As a six-year-old, I would have sooner spent a week in the basement of Badham Preschool or a cabin at Camp Crystal Lake than one hour in a room with a Good Guy doll. Unlike the other boogeymen of 1980s horror cinema, Chucky seemed explicitly targeted at kids, a piece of R-rated forbidden fruit that was meant to lure us in, and the way adults casually laughed off my fear of this ginger-haired doll made him all the more upsetting. Of course the they weren’t going to get it; they didn’t listen to Andy either.
Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
I don’t know why the character held such a presence in my nightmares. Perhaps it was the fact that I had two sisters, and, being a decidedly blue collar 1990s household, our living space was absolutely thick with the creepy cast-off plastic companions of the previous generation. Nothing gets the skin crawling more readily than the mid-century dolls, with their unnaturally proportioned heads and eyes, unexpectedly tough plastic skin, and bilious starched hair.
Then came Chucky. All of these primordial doll fears were given shape outside of the imagination, stepping out of our dreams and onto the television in what felt like an all too real capacity to my child’s brain.
But why would your parents let you watch that at such a young age? People, this was the 90s, and parents viewed the fact that someone else had offspring who was about the same age as their child as the equivalent of a background check and the thumbs-up from a private investigator in today’s terms. R-rated movies may have been forbidden in my household, but my friend Adam’s parents had no such qualms, and they thought their kid (and apparently, his friends) might as well get used to watching what they did. After all, Adam’s dad had a long shift at the steel mill, and he needed to unwind the way every American did at the time: in the La-Z-Boy recliner with a dozen Coors at his side while an adult movie played on the thirty-two-inch television.
Anyway, as much as Chucky means to me personally, I should probably tell you about the documentary.
Friends to The End
Living with Chucky is a full-length retrospective on what I would call the core seven-film Child’s Play series, specifically Child's Play (1988) through Cult of Chucky (2017). Directed by Kyra Elise Gardner, daughter of the animatronics wizard behind the infamous doll’s creation, the documentary revisits each movie in the series and chronicles the behind-the-scenes realities of the cast and crew as well as each film’s place in popular culture. To my knowledge, this is the first such documentary wholly devoted to the character of Chucky, and the fact that it is being done by someone with a personal connection to the film results in exceptional access to the creators and lots of worthwhile explorations into the film. In an era when certain documentaries are being patched together from B roll, bloated recaps, and third-hand speculative accounts, this is a refreshing and intimate view of the property.
The Child’s Play series took root when two seemingly unrelated aspects of 1980s culture met on screen: the increased proliferation and availability of animatronic toys, and the slasher film boom which was supplying movie studios with a low-risk source of easy cash in exchange for the willingness to unblinkingly corrupt a generation. The fact that the commercial toy space was readily built into the film from jump probably didn’t hurt when it came to shopping the script around either.
As the documentary highlights, Child’s Play found a large part of its success because the concept was unique. Audiences had seen living dolls in horror before, but never as main characters, and never in cases where the person they were closest to was a child. Let’s be clear: this was genius idea from conception and it came together at the right time. Animatronic toys were creepy as hell before anyone put a serial killer’s soul inside, and there are few things more quintessentially 80s than watching a struggling single mother sacrifice her financial and bodily security in order to chase the materialistic flotsam of the popular culture by buying a toy doll from a homeless man in an alley. In these two elements alone, the film unwittingly captures the essence of the period in a way few other genre films do.
Stuck with Chuck
As a documentary, this functions foremost as a love letter, not getting bogged down by the critical reception, legacy, or social retrospective of each film, but simply looking at each entry in the period of its creation and marching through a winnowing recap of what each individual film did well, or well enough. It’s a very introspective, almost private look into the films, and there’s little to no comment on the Child’s Play franchise in the wider context of horror. Don Mancini (chief screenwriter) and company continually tried to explore new avenues with Chucky, making each film take on a new dimension beyond just being bigger or better than the last. At one point, they joke about being willing to do anything to avoid taking Chucky into space, as many other franchises did when the ideas were running short).
As audience members, we follow the creators as they move through the arc of the series, perpetually searching for something unique for each film. From the dark tone and gritty urban tale of the original film, into the horror-comedy absurdity of the later movies, then trying to return to the more serious roots with Curse of Chucky. In this, I found myself coming away with a newfound appreciation for the ingenuity of the creators, as even when the box office shine had come off the franchise and they became direct-to-video, so many of these folks found continued passion and interest in returning to the franchise.
Something that really stood out to me was that the passion of the original crew was both maintained and proliferated as the series progressed. Incoming cast members, be they Jennifer Tilly or Billy Boyd, each found the infectious love that seems to permeate the entirety of this series. Similarly, actors who had smaller roles in early entries were often willing to return for new roles, and the creators made a concerted effort to integrate old faces in the later films. The actors and cast remains a surly band of pirates who carry their franchise forward, insisting that there are further stories to tell about these characters even as budgets and audiences shrink. In a modern age when sequels are announced as soon as ticket sales tip the specifics of a proprietary algorithm, there’s something positively hopeful about seeing a group of people rally around a chosen love, even as it wanes in the wider world of horror.
Low Batteries
There’s a lot of extra in the documentary, and by the time it’s winding down its longer-than-average duration, it’s digressing into cast reflections on acting and how that translates to horror, lingering on the commonality this film has with others theatrical experiences. Some of it feels extraneous, wandering and getting a mite too focused on generalizations about the acting world. That being said, I don’t begrudge Gardner her directorial indulgences in the final quarter of the film as this is the level of documentary that ultimately earns them.
Living With Chucky is a superb work for the die-hard, but carries plenty for those who are only somewhat familiar with the Chucky films. It’s a style of documentary that we don’t get to see often enough in horror—patient, attentive, heartfelt—and serves as an excellent tribute to the creative talent behind the Child’s Play series.
Living With Chucky will be available through Screambox on April 4th.
Verdict: 8/10
Strengths:
Full access to cast and creators
Gives equal attention to each of the original seven films, making this documentary relevant to Chucky fans both old and new
Spends minimal time recapping plots or reception–this is one for the hardcore fans
Weaknesses
Slightly bloated runtime, with some generalized reflections on film and acting that aren’t relevant to the series. Hard to begrudge Gardner this, as there’s clearly so much love for the content
You may also like: Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010), Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013)
