ince Chucky's last killing spree, he and his plasticine paramour, Tiffany (Tilly), have been returned to the world of the inanimate and are now the protagonists of a big-budget Hollywood movie about their supposed reign of terror. Jennifer Tilly stars alongside actor Jason Flemyng as the star of the upcoming film Chucky Goes Psycho, and complains that her career must really be in trouble if the height of her recent career is comparing notes with a pair of dolls. "I could have played Erin Brockovich instead of Julia Roberts, and I wouldn't have needed the Wonder Bra," she says.
At the same time, another enchanted doll named Sh-tface (Billy Boyd) is plying his trade in England with a con artist who employs him as a ventriloquist's dummy. When he sees footage of the Tilly movie on television, he becomes convinced that Chucky and Tiffany are his parents. Stowing away in a box headed for America, he arrives in the effects workshop of the movie and revives his erstwhile mom and dad with a mystical talisman. After an argument to decide whether Sh-tface is a boy or a girl, Chucky and Tiffany rename him Glen (and Glenda) and attempt to create some approximation of a "normal" family life.
Tiffany soon decides that she wants another child, but refuses to bear it herself. Instead, she and Chucky plot to impregnate Jennifer Tilly and then take over her body and that of her future director, rapper Redman. Once Tilly becomes the surrogate for the dolls' child, bodies begin to pile up around her home and suggest that the actress is not-so-slowly going crazy. Before long, Tilly finds that she must face down the demonic dolls for control of her body, her children's lives and—most importantly—the future of her career.
A gory guilty pleasure
It's hard to believe that the Child's Play series survived not only one but five full-fledged theatrical releases, but despite the limitations of the material (it is, after all, about a demonically possessed doll) its success has not only continued, but it's appreciated. 1998's Bride of Chucky was the second most lucrative installment in the 16-year history of the franchise (after the original film), and the latest film seems to be in no danger of killing off (no pun intended) one of the oddest and curiously appealing series in the history of horror.
Returning from that laugh-filled spectacle are Brad Dourif (the longtime voice of Chucky) and Jennifer Tilly, who pulls double duty as the voice of Tiffany and scatter-brained diva "Jennifer Tilly" (extra points are awarded for taking on the thankless task of parodying herself). The plot borrows in no small way from the likes of other recent postmodern horror flicks like Wes Craven's New Nightmare and the Scream series, where fantasy and reality merge in an unholy union to bring the scares off the screen and into your lap. The uphill fight with Chucky, however, is that there is no real-life precedent I've yet discovered that suggests that the things that go bump in the night are actually your favorite childhood action figures or stuffed animals. That said, however, Seed of Chucky is an enjoyable little jaunt that is less frightening than funny, and can hardly be begrudged for its ambitious if over-reaching efforts to turn a corner on the series.
Don Mancini, who wrote the first four films, finally steps behind the camera for this fifth outing, and proves that his eye for gore is no less cutting than his predecessors'. At the same time, he throws in more than a handful of classic horror references, including Halloween and Psycho, that will at best amuse fans of the genre. The film's direction matters little, ultimately, when the characters seem to be having so much fun: Tilly, preening like a diva who's lost her luster; Tiffany, huskily advocating that she and Chucky enter rehab for their killing "addiction"; Redman, always addressed improperly (with the accent on the first syllable, as if he's Jewish) and pretending to be lucid enough to direct an epic production about the Virgin Mary; and Glen, embracing his sexual ambiguity and becoming the world's first transsexual psychopathic doll.
And then there's Chucky, who isn't quite obscured by the glut of new characters, but seems a bit lost amid more plot developments than he's ever had to deal with. If anyone was wondering why he's become such a crank in his advancing age, just take a look at his henpecking wife and fancy-pants kid and all questions will be answered. Whether the series progresses forward after this one or not, they've made a suitably entertaining effort out of this installment, and most fans can probably rest easy knowing that Chucky didn't go out on a sour cinematic note.
