Written by Jesse Miller, MoreHorror.com
The Chucky franchise has been pretty quiet after the full blown comedy Seed Of Chucky and I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing because how many entries can you make with a premise about a killer doll before it falls stagnant?
Yet here we are with Curse Of Chucky, the new film in the franchise that sees the series go back to its horror roots and mostly leaving behind the comedy angle, which admittedly didn't work quite well for me anyway.
Returning to the story are writer / Director Don Mancini and Brad Douriff and really, it wouldn't be a a Chucky film without these involved, as they are part of the reason these films have that magic about them, and if they weren't behind this film, I probably wouldn't been as keen to watch this as I was.
Mancini wanted to make this more horrific and he's succeeded - the film builds dread wonders and establishes atmosphere from the very beginning and peppered throughout are jump scares that worked for me.
That whole build up to the moment Chucky comes alive is just sensational, which is fantastic because I had thought had seen it all before when it comes to the anticipation of Chucky coming alive but I was wrong - Mancini uses every nauseating camera angle to capture the tension.
Making things a little more eerie is the gothic musical score by Joesph Deluca, which features this unnerving piece that makes the rising dread all the more haunting as events unravel.
The performances of the cast here are actually pretty solid from all involved, with particularly great turns from Danielle Bisutti and Fiona Dourif, who delivers an effective and fun performance.
Brad Dourif steals the show, despite his minimal dialogue, and delivers dialogue maniacally - that's what most of us come here for and it doesn't disappoint as he really masters the skill of being skin crawling here.
As far as story goes, it's actually pretty effective most of the time and the film offers a few surprising developments that I didn't anticipate and for that, I'm quite grateful.
However, I say it's pretty effective most of the time because the story comes with a few developments that I found quite difficult to let go - there are issues throughout this film, things that seem a little lazily thrown together to get one plot point A out of the way for plot point B to go on smoothly and with that in mind, you'll have to surrender to horror-world-logic here.
Another small issue I had with this film is it's use of CGI - whether this was a budgetary issue or whatever, I obviously can't say, but the film operates as such an old fashioned horror that I would've liked to have seen more practical effects on display to complete the vibe.
Am I nitpicking? Yeah, probably. It doesn't matter though because these issues don't ruin an otherwise fairly solid film that's quite fun and effective to disappear into.
Why this wasn't released in cinemas is a question that definitely needs answering, as Curse Of Chucky is a fun horror film, one that both serves as a remainder to how entertaining a CHUCKY film can be and may just revitalises the franchise for more entries in the near future - and that is something I'm definitely on board for.