Curse of Chucky (2013, Don Mancini)

It's kinda strange that this one went straight-to-video, though I guess after running the comedic satire into the ground with the last few entries in the Chucky franchise, people may not have flocked to the theater in droves for another one. As it turns out, however, they were smart in giving the series a bit of a refurbishment with "Curse of Chucky" - scaling back on the wacky humor and going for a more straight-up 'horror' tone. In that regard, I thought this latest entry was certainly entertaining for what it was...

Soon after being delivered a Good Guy doll from a mysterious source, a wheelchair-bound young woman's mother dies in an unexpected 'accident'. A day or so later, her sister and sister's family, nanny and priest arrive to discuss funeral arrangements and such, but don't realize they are in the midst of a murderous doll that intends to dust them all off.

High points here would, of course, include the more 'serious' tenor - at least, as much as you can get from a movie about a foul-mouthed ginger doll swinging hatchets and butcher knives. It all works well enough. There's also some decent (albeit, cartoonish at times...) kills thrown in and plenty of references to the past movies for the die-hard fans, including a cameo from Jennifer Tilly (in human form) wedged in just for the hell of it, obviously, and some back-story on Brad Dourif's character. Low points - the CGI doll effects are terrible at times and I'm really sick of post-credit sequences. I wish they'd stop doing that. "Curse of Chucky", overall, is worth checking out if you're curious about a Chucky revamping and it actually came out better than I expected, considering I'm not at all a huge fan of this series.