On Syfy, Chucky is back with a second season that is both confident and vicious.
Warning: this sentence contains a spoiler about Chucky. Even though the killer doll Chucky, who has more resurrections under his belt than Sauron, dies at the end of the first season of Chucky, it does not matter because he has progressed past such menial obstacles as death. Now in its sixth decade, the Child’s Play franchise is as intricate as ever, but for all the hoops it leaps through to keep the killer doll(s) and his opponents on a collision course, Chucky’s mentality is as delightfully straightforward as ever: keep the deaths coming.
We pick up barely seconds from where we left off at the end of the first season: After the teenagers Jake (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson), and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) have slain the Chucky doll that terrified their town and families, they find out that a truck loaded with dozens of new Chuckys is on its way to poor, doomed children across the United States. If you’re just joining us, let me fill you in: Chucky can now split his soul, and he’s made a huge deal out of it. Following a hurried and exciting prologue in which Andy Barclay (played by Alex Vincent, who is still performing the part that he created in 1988) tries to put a stop to the Chucky TruckTM, the story then jumps ahead one year. Lexy is stuck in the suburban ennui of Hackensack, where her disgraced mother (Barbara Alyn Woods) has been recalled as Mayor and her sister Caroline (Carina London Battrick) is harbouring a problematic fondness for dolls. Jake is now living with a new foster family, which includes an adorable younger brother. Devon is still coming to terms with the death of his mother. Lexy says to her sister while she is tucking her up at night, “Say it with me: All dolls are crap,” and they both laugh.
In Chucky, season two, they get right to the meat of the story rather early. We won’t give away the details of how and why everything happened, but it’s safe to say that our teen sleuth three won’t be apart for too much longer, and a new Chucky won’t be far behind. (As a side note, I think it’s really cool that the puppeteers that work on Chucky are all credited as “also starring” in the series.) The first murder of the new season is gruesome and startling in its basic sense of malice. Even with all of the absurdity that comes along with a story having a doll with a blond head and a violent streak as its main character, Chucky has no problem with pure sadism. Brad Dourif continues to give Chucky a sense of lighthearted menace, and he is performing the role as well as he has at any point in the past. In the first episode, Chucky says out loud, “Uber has made it so much simpler to be a killer doll,” which is a combination of bragging and wondering. “I used to take hostages to drive me places,” he continues, as if fondly remembering the last time he held a flip phone in his hand. “I used to have to take hostages to drive me places,” he says.
Nica Pierce, played by Fiona Dourif and whose father is Brad, is going through a rough patch somewhere else. Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly, portraying someone claiming to be Jennifer Tilly – it’s a whole thing), who is still possessed by the soul of Chucky Prime, has severed her arms and legs in order to stop him from launching an attack. Nica, who resides in the body for the majority of the time, is in for a rough ride after hearing that news. Although it is a horrible and unappealing end for the franchise’s most recognisable “hero” after Andy, the younger Dourif devours the scenery whenever her Chucky persona is brought to the forefront.
Simply by dividing the stories in season two, the transition between the new Chucky and the classic version of the character is handled in a more smooth manner. The sequences involving Tiffany might as well be from a whole other show than the one in which Jake, Devon, and Lexy are currently participating, thereby expanding the canon of the original movie. Nica and Tiffany sequences will definitely be confusing to viewers who are just tuning in, but they are brief and punchy, and sufficient information is provided to catch the sense of what’s going on. In addition, Wikipedia was created for a specific purpose.
After a terrible event that all three of them place the responsibility on Chucky for, they are expelled from their former school and sent to a Catholic reformatory, which just so happens to be the same institution in which Chucky, then known as Charles Lee Ray, spent his childhood. This season will most definitely feature Chucky wreaking havoc on a convent full of nuns. After he has revealed himself, he brags to one of his sisters that “I got revived, too,” and adds that “it didn’t take me three days.” The narratives will, at some point in the future, become intertwined with one another; yet, Chucky is particularly skilled at isolating the more recent major characters in a single eerie setting (see: Curse Of Chucky and Cult Of Chucky, which take place in a scary mansion and psychiatric hospital, respectively).
Even though critics were only given access to two episodes of Chucky before it aired, the show is already weaving an intriguing and relatively unified plot that builds on the franchise’s established strengths. The second season is not expected to bring in a large number of new followers, but for those who are already on board, one of the most terrifying shows on television has upped its game.
Also, Read ‘West Side Story’ Falls Flat at Box Office With Disappointing $10 Million Debut
Follow us on Twitter