Child's Play 2 (1990)

Child's Play 2

IMDb rate: 5,7

Genre: Slasher, Dolls

Starring: Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Christine Elise

If I have to name my favorite slasher franchise I would never go for A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween or Friday the 13th. Nope, my favorite is and will always be the Child's Play franchise. These movies are so damn enjoyable, there's humor, murder, dolls and there's even somewhat of logic in the sequels. I'll have to admit, I haven't seen the third one yet, but I own it on DVD so I'll give it a watch quite soon. For now, here's my review of Child's Play 2. 

Here is what Child's Play 2 is about:
Andy Barclay has been placed in a foster home after the tragic events of the first film, since his mother was committed. In an attempt to save their reputation, the manufacturers of Chucky reconstruct the killer doll, to prove to the public that nothing was wrong with it in the first place. In doing so, they also bring the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray back to life. As Chucky tries to locate Andy, the body count rises. Will Andy be able to escape, or will Chucky succeed in possessing his body?

In the first Child's Play movie there was still a bit of a question if Chucky was actually alive or if it was just Andy's imagination. That lead to mysterious scenes where we didn't actually saw the doll do anything because we watched it from Chucky's (or Andy's?!) view. It was interesting but still it lacked some action scenes of the moving doll. Now we figured out that Chucky is very real we finally get some Chucky action scenes. He is getting a lot more screen time and his character has much more time to shine through. This leads to very funny scenes of where Chucky murders another Good Guy doll, buries it and takes it places. When activated to talk he says "Hi! I'm.... Tommy!", which was pretty funny. Because Chucky gets more screen-time it was needed to update his animations, which worked out pretty well I think. He became a lot more scary than he already was, and to be honest, he got me frightened.

What bothers me in most slasher sequels is the fact that when they died, got beheaded, shot in the heart, set on fire or whatever they show up unharmed in every sequel. Without explanation they just appear fit and alive again. After seeing Child's Play I was already wondering how they would going to explain the return of Chucky in Child's Play 2, since he was set on fire and there wasn't much left of him. They actually played it very clever because the makers of the dolls were rebuilding Chucky to check if something was wrong with him, with as main idea to not be sued for any mistakes. It's simple, but so clever. That's also what I like about Bride of Chucky, because he actually looks fucked up there which is pretty logical after all that shit that happened to him. It's also what I enjoy about Curse of Chucky, at first he looks perfect again, which is very questionable after Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. But then it appears that his perfect looking skin is just make-up and he is still scarred underneath it. I honestly thought it was brilliant and I loved it immensely (also the return of Alex Vincent and Jennifer Tilly, it was fucking awesome).

As before, Andy ends up being in some messed up situations again. Being blamed for everything, and not being believed by anyone. I did feel sorry for poor Andy, he just can't seem to catch a break. But for real, when you take a foster kid in home that's being traumatized by a doll, why the hell would you keep that same looking doll lying around in your house?! Great acting again from Alex Vincent, very convincing little kid. Wasn't specifically crazy about Christine Elise as Kyle though, but her character wasn't very much important anyway. The best thing about Chucky is of course Brad Dourif's voice, Chucky is just unthinkable with that voice. I'm really glad that he's still doing it, because Chucky without Brad Dourif is just not Chucky. A bit like Freddy Krueger without Robert Englund, it's just not really Freddy Krueger (I'm looking at you, A Nightmare on Elm Street remake).

The first Child's Play wasn't necessarily a slasher, with the sequel though, the whole image changed. The body count of Child's Play 2 doubled, the kills became more gruesome and innovative and Chucky doesn't really seem to care anymore who he kills to get to Andy. This did lead to a few awesome/gruesome looking kills though, for example when a technician encounters the eyeball machine of the toy-factory...

Child's Play 2 is a worthy sequel, it follows up perfectly with the first movie and it evolves the character Chucky to a real killer doll. Perhaps it's less scary than the previous movie, but the improvement of doll-animations sure boosts the scare-level a lot. The plot is fun and the death scenes are pretty awesome. Definitely a very entertaining movie.

My rate: 7/10