Fan service that cuts to the bone: Chucky on TV
Chucky has been around for quite awhile. After seven films following the same continuity and a reboot, the eponymous doll has made his way to the small screen.
The first film featuring the character, Child’s Play, was released in 1988. Since then, Chucky has been a veritable mascot for slasher films.
He’s undoubtedly one of the most famous film villains of the last 40 years, and his popularity has always remained relatively constant. When considering the length of time that the character has been around, it would seem as though the gas would be just about to run out in 2021. Chucky the television series lets viewers know that this red-headed terror can still kill with the best of them.
After teenager Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur) buys a Chucky doll from a yardsale, his life begins falling apart when the evil piece of plastic decides to kill various people in Jake’s life. The cast is rounded out by Jake’s friends and enemies, Hackensack’s police force, various school faculty members, and Jake’s (surviving) family members.
A show like this could easily veer into the unwatchable if the wrong young cast was hired. There are dozens of shows on television that are nearly unwatchable because networks hire pretty young actors that are terrible at acting.
Luckily that’s mostly not the case here. Arthur and friends are more than capable of getting through scenes both dramatic and terrifying (save for a couple of truly awfully performed side characters).
Wheeler is an interesting character because he was interested in horror way before Chucky was on the scene. He’s a troubled boy with a troubled past and an even more difficult future ahead of him and he’s more than capably performed by Arthur.
Jake’s love interest Devon, played by Björgvin Arnarson, is a true-crime junkie and podcaster. The couple’s interplay is often touching and Mancini has a gift of endearing the audience to characters they’ve only just met.
We’re only on episode 6 at the time of this article’s publishing, but I can confidently say that Jake and Devon are two of the franchise’s most compelling protagonists.
Don Mancini, who has been involved in the franchise since day one, sees to it that these character’s stories have some meat on their bones. It’s a testament to the show’s creative force that Chucky is interesting when the titular character isn’t on screen.
Brad Dourif returns in Chucky in the role that he is perhaps most famous for. He’s spectacular and provides the living doll with charisma, smarts, and a sense of evil that is unrivaled in most on-screen villains.
Truly, enough can’t be said about Dourif’s presence here. While the Child’s Play reboot was good enough with the great Mark Hamill in the lead roll, there is just no substitution for Dourif’s line reading.
Chucky is just as evil here as he’s ever been, but he’s also more fleshed out (get it?) than the series has allowed him to be in the past. Smartly using flashbacks to fill in the titular character’s backstory throughout each episode, the show allows the audience able to get a handle on what makes Chucky keep killing.
It’s incredibly surprising that a series that has endured so many sequels, some good some bad, is still continuing in the same timeline nearly 35 years after the first film. Don Mancini has an apparent love for the characters that he’s created, and it’s really nice to see them all done justice.
The Halloween series, for instance, has gone through no less than three story resets, a remake with its own sequel, and a reboot that has now started its own series of films. While the Michael Myers saga of has its own specific pleasures, there is something to be said that Chucky is still trucking along and still finding interesting ways to continue its story.
Fiona Dourif (Brad’s daughter) and Jennifer Tilly are two characters that return from the film series. They are both fantastic here and are sort of too good for a television show. Seriously, each scene with these two plays as good as the best stuff out of the movies.
Jennifer Tilly portrays Chucky’s wife, Tiffany, who has stolen the body of... Jennifer Tilly. Fiona Dourif is playing a character who has been possessed by Chucky but who also comes into consciousness on occasion. She’s a murderer not on purpose, but by way of psychopathic voodoo killer possession.
That may sound confusing, and it is. This series has truly gone out of its way to be as strange as possible and the fact that the show directly continues the story of all of the insane films could make for quite the mind-boggling mess for newcomers.
I’m currently watching the show with a friend who has never seen one second of any Chucky movie, and with a little bit of explaining in each episode, he’s getting the drift. If you’re coming in cold, though, I would recommend that you read some Wikipedia before you push play.
Horror television shows often face the problem of having to fill too much time and therefore not featuring enough horror deaths. Chucky does not have that problem. In pretty much every episode, someone dies terribly.
The show really has some guts because characters who are sympathetically and three-dimensionally drawn are killed off, and it’s genuinely shocking. While it’s sad to see these characters go, it brings the dramatic weight to a whole new level.
Alex Vincent and Christine Elise also return here as characters who have been dealing with the consequences of Chucky’s murderous tendencies for decades. Vincent has been featured in the last two film sequels, and its enthralling to see he and Elise (of Child’s Play 2) travel the country attempting to eradicate Chucky clones.
This television show has done the unthinkable. It’s a feat of fanservice that also brings something new into the franchise.
When sequel properties like this are produced, they are usually quick cashgrabs meant to exploit audience nostalgia or are dumbed down versions of their former selves because of distrust of audience understanding. That is not the case here.
Don Mancini has successfully brought back all of his most important characters and has introduced plenty of new blood that more than cut the mustard. Chucky on T.V. is smart, funny, thrilling, endearing, and scary.
Chucky season 1 episode 7 will premiere on Tues. Nov. 22 on USA and Syfy. Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, and Cult of Chucky can be found streaming on Peacock.