Chucky

If you’re a long-time fan of Chucky, then you probably already have the series set on your DVR. But even if you’re not a long-time supporter, this is the perfect slasher series for you to watch this Halloween season.

The people making Chucky don’t appear to be losing sleep over such technicalities as “what happens” or “how much sense it makes”, but if you can allow yourself to sink into its campy-gory teenage nonsense, then it sweeps you away on a tide of vulgarity and escapism.

Through the first four episodes, Mancini’s most impressive feat is balancing Chucky between serious topics and ridiculousness, while always keeping it fun to watch.

Like Starz’s similarly lighthearted Ash vs Evil Dead, Chucky works because it’s reverential and yet not consumed with rehashing that which came before. It won’t win over many new converts, but anyone with a soft spot for the cheery maniac doll will no doubt get a kick out of his latest reign of terror.

Frankly, this Chucky series makes plenty of good decisions when it comes to tone, walking a very fine line between self-awareness and self-consciousness in its storytelling—it knows what it is, but it’s not meta. The show is fully ridiculous, but it’s not trying to be anything else. It’s also creepy and gory and a slashin’ good time.

Chucky adds some fun story elements to the “murdering doll” dynamic, bringing the franchise back to it’s earliest days, when we found out how Charles Lee Ray became a belligerent, knife-wielding, redheaded doll.

There are hints that Syfy and USA’s Chucky might eventually get into the twisty and bizarrely meta world of the extended Child’s Play universe (I truly didn’t know that a movie called Cult of Chucky existed). But through the four episodes sent to critics, it tends, agreeably, toward the simple side of things. ... Honestly, anybody tuning in to Chucky is there for the doll. In that respect, the series delivers solidly.

Does it make much sense? No. But it’s fun to see it play out with a mischievous sense of anything-goes silliness. Mancini and Dourif have been doing this for so long, they seem to have nailed down an understanding of what makes Chucky fun. And when Chucky [the series] follows suit, it is too.

Making Jake gay, a reflection of openly gay “Child’s Play” creator and “Chucky” writer/director Don Mancini, offers an admirably different perspective for a horror franchise – but viewers will need to buy into the teen drama to appreciate this iteration of “Chucky.”

Chucky is a fine attempt at bringing the killer doll to the small screen. The allure of Brad Dourif as the evil doll is enough to lure me back. But if you aren’t familiar with the Child’s Play franchise, don’t start with Chucky.