Hooptober 3.0 | 5/31 | Franchise 5/7 | Remake
Henry Kaslan of Kaslan Corporation introduces the ugliest doll imaginable called Buddi. Buddi is a home assistant a la Alexa, but baked into a doll. It also uses “self-learning technology” to learn and adapt to its owner’s routines and surroundings.
Cut to a Kaslan factory in Vietnam, where exhausted employees assemble Buddi dolls and program them. One employee phases out for a second, and his supervisor smacks him in the face. When the supervisor walks away, the employee writes a new routine in the chip boot-up process which removes the safety protocols. Once he installs the chip, boxes the toy, and sends it on its way, he jumps out of a window and commits suicide.
In Chicago, Karen Barclay works retail at Zed Mart. She returns home to her new apartment and her 12-year-old son, Andy. Karen confiscates Andy’s phone when she sees him watching raunchy videos of Buddi humping something? I don’t know.
Back at work, when yet another customer returns a broken Buddi doll, Karen blackmails her boss to let her take the doll home. Karen gives Andy the Buddi doll, which Andy hates, but tries out, anyway. As it comes on, its eyes spark red and it doesn’t sync with the app correctly. Andy tries to name it Han Solo, but it glitches a bunch and calls itself Chucky.
The doll wakes up Andy throughout the night. Putting it in another room or turning it off is an option, but Andy instead suffers through it. The kid teaches it how to brush its teeth and stab a cutting board with a knife. The family cat, Rooney, scratches Andy, and Chucky sizes Rooney up to being a villain. Andy leaves to get a bandaid. When he comes back, Chucky’s eyes are glowing red, and it is strangling the cat.
This movie has “designed by committee” written all over it. The plot writes itself, borrowing whatever beats from the original it needs while tying in AI fear-mongering. It feels like an inevitability more than a passion project, despite what director Lars Klevberg says.
The script has the irreconcilable problem of presenting a sincere product and the cultural ironic detachment around it. No one seems to like or want the Buddi, tolerating its presence out of plot necessity. The toy charges Andy with a butcher knife and cuts him, and they keep it. It kills the cat, and they keep it.
The movie’s strength lies in its gore. Despite the screenplay being PG to PG-13 throughout, the gore ensures an R rating. I feel like teens would be the ones who enjoy this movie, especially as the friends form a pseudo-Stranger Things arrangement. But with that and the odd anti-millennial rhetoric, this is for Gen X I guess.
Buddi feels like ET, especially with its glowing finger that controls things. Of course, ET doesn’t learn to murder.
David James Lewis is the most miscast character imaginable. Did they hire him because he looks like Chucky? His facelift scars are quite prominent in this.
I despise Ty Consiglio in this — he seems like an okay actor, but his character is maddening.
Let me be clear: I have no childhood affinity associated with the Child’s Play franchise, so I don’t care about its relationship to the original. Besides the names, this movie has nothing to do with the originals, so I watched it with that in mind.
I wouldn’t call this an awful movie — it just didn’t give me what I wanted from a horror movie.