A pair of homicidal, newlywed dolls go on a nonsensical road-trip across the country, searching for a way to obtain human bodies. The movie’s appeal doesn’t come from the gruesome kills, elaborate traps or dark nature, but Chucky and Tiffany’s hilarious chemistry. At some points you’re gonna forget you’re watching a horror movie (I still don’t really even consider it one), finding yourself rooting for the endearing, slasher twosome.
Like most horror movies, “The Bride of Chucky” is terrible —god it’s awful. However, being the fourth movie in a long line of “Chucky” movies, the franchise has acquired a level of self-awareness. The movie relishes in it’s mediocrity, opting to be as surreal as possible for the sake of entertainment. Perfect if you’re trying to both laugh and cringe on Halloween.
Fun fact, I was absolutely terrified of Chucky as a kid. I’m confident in admitting that the redhead, mean-mugging doll was my first real fear as a kid, feeding into a perpetual cycle of nightmares throughout my early childhood. At age 8, I was getting my haircut at my uncle’s barbershop, a place I’ve always perceived a safe haven, full of funny adult jokes and sports rants. I turn my egg-shaped 8-year-old noggin towards the mounted television, and to my dismay, an image of a terrifying doll was staring right into my retina —and I couldn’t avert my eyes. The first Child’s Play movie, and arguably the scariest, was playing on TNT or some shit back in 2007. What baffles me most about this formative point in my childhood was how fixated I was on something I deemed so terrifying, a mere 30-minutes would induce absurd levels of childhood anxiety that’ll stalk me up until age 12. I wouldn’t be able to walk into a Blockbuster without my mother telling me “The coast was clear,” no “Chucky” movies were in sight. I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy my neighborhood Tampa Bay Buccaneers game’s due to the fact that, now defamed NFL coach, Jon Gruden’s facial structure is akin to Chucky’s. Bucs fans would bring little Chucky dolls —draped in football Jerseys— with them to games. Tampa Bay was not the place to be for a child petrified of Chucky.
Childhood allows us to become cognizant of things that invoke fear, adulthood is where we face those fears. Growing up, I was able to conquer my fear of the fictional, funny, murder doll and even became a pseudo-fan of the series mostly for sentimental reasons. That’s why I made it a point of emphasis to binge through all of the Child’s Play movies during Halloween, just so I can laugh at what I perceived to be “scary” when I was a child. Childhood innocence is ironic. Developing into an adult, you realize the things most terrifying in the world aren’t the dolls, demons and ghosts depicted in entertainment. Humans are perhaps the most terrifying monsters of them all.
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