Cult of Chucky (2017)

2017 91 Minutes

Confined to an asylum for the criminally insane for the past four years, Nica Pierce is erroneously convinced that she, not Chucky, murdered her entire family. But when her psychiatrist introduces...

Overall Rating

4 / 10

Verdict: So-So

User Review

Chris

4 / 10

'Cult of Chucky (2017)' is the newest addition to the Child's Play franchise and is another straight to home video release. While this latest installment does brings back a couple of characters from some of the previous films, it mostly revolves around Fiona Dourif's Nica from the last film. Nica has been confined to a mental hospital as nobody believes Chucky was the killer in the last film and instead it was Nica who killed everyone and Chucky was just a fantasy in Nica's mind.

Most of this film takes place in a minimum security asylum, and while the confined setting from the previous film worked well, this new confined setting did not work as well. The setting is too plain and simple and ultimately just resulted in the movie feeling dull and slow. I feel like horror movies thrive best when there is a lot of commotion and craziness on the screen. 'Cult of Chucky' is also held back by it's terribly written characters. Many of the asylum patients are very over the top and unnecessarily complicated. Writers keep trying to augment slasher films with complex storylines and over the top characters but really what makes a slasher movie so great is its simplicity. Most slasher fans are easy to please, all they want are some creative kills and consistent scares and tension.

Probably the biggest issue I had with this film was the Chucky doll itself. They made some changes to the design of the Chucky doll, and I found these changes to be puppet-like and very distracting. Most of the time Chucky was on the screen, I didn't find myself scared, but instead distracted by the facial expressions and mechanics of the doll itself.

I am going to give 'Cult of Chucky' a 4 out of 10. While it did for the most part stick to a non-campy horror approach, I didn't find it that scary and the new special effects on the Chucky doll were distracting and puppet-like. I do still have high hopes that the franchise can fully redeem itself, but it needs to return to it simplistic slasher roots like 'Curse of Chucky' did and stop trying to make Tiffany character work.

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