Curse of Chucky

Plot

Twenty-five years after the first film, Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif) mysteriously arrives in the mail to the home of paraplegic Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) and her mother Sarah (Chantal Quesnel). Later that night Sarah is found dead from a stab wound, and her death is ruled as a suicide.

A short while later, Nica is visited by her domineering older sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti), accompanied by Barb's husband Ian (Brennan Elliott), their six-year-old daughter Alice (Summer H. Howell), live-in nanny Jill (Maitland McConnell), and Father Frank (A Martinez). Alice finds Chucky, and, since everyone thinks that he's just a doll, is allowed to keep him. That evening, while Alice and Nica are making soup, Chucky secretly pours rat poison into one of the dinner bowls. Father Frank eats the poison and, after leaving the house, is decapitated in a car accident.

Later that night, after everyone else has gone to sleep, Nica investigates the Chucky doll on the internet and finds news articles of the unsolved Chucky murders and the doll's link to serial killer Charles Lee Ray. Elsewhere, Chucky kicks a bucket of rain water onto the floor's power outlets, killing Jill and causing an electrical blackout. Barb gets up to check on Alice and is attacked by Chucky, who stabs her in the eye with a kitchen knife. Nica hears Barb's cries but has to crawl up the stairs with her hands due to the blackout making the elevator unusable. By the time Nica gets there, Barb is dead with her eyes gouged out, and Nica sees for herself that the Chucky doll is alive. When Chucky flees, Nica wakes Ian up in a panic. He takes Nica to the garage before going back into the house to look for Alice.

Ian cannot find Alice, so he returns to the garage and disarms Nica, believing her to be responsible for the murders. Nica tries to explain that Chucky is alive, but Chucky acts like a lifeless doll when Ian looks at him. Ian decides to review the footage from a hidden camera that he planted on Chucky earlier (to get evidence of Barb's affair with Jill) and learns that Alice is locked in a closet and that Chucky truly is alive. Exposed, Chucky murders Ian with a hatchet before he can act. Nica manages to break out of her restraints and tries to kill Chucky, but she fails and Chucky pushes her over the balcony onto the ground floor.

When Nica asks why Chucky is doing this, he explains through flashbacks that as Charles Lee Ray, he was a friend of her family and in love with Sarah. Ray killed Nica's father and kidnapped Sarah while she was pregnant with Nica. When Sarah betrayed him, he stabbed her in the stomach (which resulted in Nica being born paraplegic) and escaped. Ray's flight from the police ultimately led to his death as a human, which is why he came back to Sarah for revenge. Before Chucky can kill Nica, she fights back, leading to an extended scuffle. A police officer then arrives at the house, but when he enters he only sees Barb's body upstairs and Nica holding the bloody knife. A motionless Chucky watches from a nearby chair.

Some time later, Nica is sent to a mental asylum for the murders. Chucky has been retained by the police as an exhibit for the trials, and afterward the arresting officer takes Chucky away. The officer gets in his car and sees Chucky breathing in the bag. Before the officer can inspect the bag, he is killed by Tiffany, who had been hiding in the backseat. Tiffany collects Chucky and asks, "Who's next?"

Alice, now living with her grandmother, comes home from school to find Chucky waiting for her. Chucky persuades Alice to play "Hide The Soul", and starts the infamous voodoo chant to transfer his soul to Alice's body. The grandmother, who had been tied up and strangled with a bag over her head but is not dead, sits up suddenly, shortly after Chucky begins the chant.

In a post-credits scene set six months later, Chucky, still in his doll body, is delivered to the now-adult Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), apparently having failed to possess Alice's body. When Andy turns his back to answer a phone call from his mother, Chucky cuts his way out of the package with a knife. However, after Chucky looks at a picture of Kyle and Andy with his mother, he turns to face Andy, who had anticipated Chucky coming after him again and is now pointing a shotgun at Chucky's head. Andy says firmly, "Play with this," right before pulling the trigger.

Cast

Development

In an August 2008 interview, Don Mancini and David Kirschner spoke of a planned reboot of the Chucky franchise to be written and directed by Mancini. They described their choice of a remake over a sequel as a response to the will of the fans, who "want to see a scary Chucky movie again", and "want to go back to the straightforward horror rather than the horror comedy." They indicated that Brad Dourif would return as the voice of Chucky.

In a subsequent interview, Mancini described the remake as a darker and scarier retelling of the original movie, but one that, while having new twists and turns, will not stray too far from the original concept. At a 2009 horror convention, Brad Dourif confirmed his role in the remake. At a reunion panel at the Mad Monster Party horror and sci-fi convention, the cast and crew from the original film confirmed both a remake and a spin-off are in development. Writer Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner were working on a sequel titled Revenge of Chucky.

In June 2012, it was confirmed that a sequel would enter production, entitled Curse of Chucky and be released direct-to-video.

Filming

The film began production in early September 2012 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and ended in mid-October. In November 2012, Don Mancini announced that filming for Curse of Chucky had been completed and he planned to release it Halloween 2013.

Release and marketing

In May 2013, Fiona Dourif released the first image of Chucky through her Instagram. The image is from the film's soundtrack cover and shows Chucky looking more like the doll from the first three films rather than the previous last two films. The official trailer was released on July 8, 2013. The film's official Red band trailer was released August 1, 2013. The film received its world premiere on August 2, 2013, at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal. The film also received its European premiere at the London FrightFest Film Festival on August 22, 2013, accompanied with a screening of the original trilogy of Child's Play films. The DVD was released on October 8, 2013, and grossed $3.4 million in the US.

Reception

The film holds an 81% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 16 reviews, making it the best-reviewed film in the Child's Play franchise. An early review posted on Bloody Disgusting on August 2, 2013, was very favorable of the film. Brad Miska stated, "Curse of Chucky may just be the best home video sequel since Wrong Turn 2. It's alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn't let Mancini shoot this for theaters". He continued to say, "Chucky fans should rejoice, though, as Curse of Chucky is clearly going to re-ignite the franchise for years to come." Ryan Larson of Shock Till You Drop also had mostly positive things to say about it, stating that "the movie does so much right that it’s easy to overlook the very few flaws it has. The pacing and writing coincide to create a fun blood-soaked jaunt that never gets boring or dull." He goes on to praise the director, pointing out that "Mancini (pulling double duty as writer as well as director) does a great job at introducing and ushering off characters in a fashion that doesn’t bog the film down with a bunch of characters who get three minutes of film time before getting the axe, or butcher knife in this case. The kills are kitschy, but in the best way possible, waxing nostalgic of the slasher films of the late eighties and early nineties."

At the film's world premiere at the Montreal Fantasia Festival, it received a Gold Award for Best International Feature.

Halloween Horror Nights

Curse of Chucky received its own scarezone in the 2013 lineup at Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights.

This is not the first time Chucky has been featured at Halloween Horror Nights. In 2009, the franchise received its own maze, entitled Chucky's Fun House in Hollywood, a seasonal re-themeing of Universal Studios Hollywood's year-round attraction Universal's House of Horrors and Chucky: Friends Till the End at Universal Studios Florida, themed around the Good Guys factory and scenes featuring Chucky and other childhood toys gone bad. Since 1992, Chucky has starred in his own shows Hollywood, Chucky's In-Your-Face Insults and Chucky's Insult Emporium. In 2010, Chucky was featured in the "20 Years of Fear" scarezone in Florida.

Sequel

On December 2, 2013, it was confirmed that there would be a sequel to Curse of Chucky. Mainstream news and quotes from cast and crew via Twitter say that filming will take place in South Africa. In February 2015, Mancini confirmed that the script was being written. A year later, Mancini, Jennifer Tilly and Fiona Dourif confirmed that shooting would begin soon for the film. On January 5th 2017 it was confirmed the film will be titled Cult of Chucky and would begin filming soon. The film is set released in October 3, 2017.