Cult of Chucky (2017)
Episode 384, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: We are, well, technically we’re at the end of our month of Chucky, but we just decided we had to finish out the series, so we pushed it into one more month. So today we are finishing it out with all of the Chucky movies.
This is 2017’s Cult of Chucky, which came fairly fast on the heels of, what, four years later than, um, the one before it?
Craig: I don’t remember. I don’t remember when the other one came out. This one came out in 2017.
Todd: I’m just gonna come right out and say it. I really, really liked this movie. You know, it’s interesting because I think I was pretty shocked by the new tone that was set by the last movie as we had in our last podcast episode.
And this movie, I don’t know if I was just already settled into that tone. It just felt a little lighter than the previous movie. It’s definitely gory. In fact, I think it might be the goriest of the whole series.
Craig: Well, Don Mancini had said he wanted it to be, I don’t know. They’re all pretty gory. Yeah,
Todd: they’ve all, but you know, the earlier ones, the, the gore is kind of, it’s a little offscreen.
It’s a little more offscreen sometimes or just a little more abstract. But this is, this is pretty gory. It’s got a very cold, modern. It’s interesting how the previous film, it has a very cold feel to it as well, but it’s also very gothic
Craig: in tone. And the last movie is very dark, and this movie is very bright.
Yeah. Almost everything is stark white. Quite a contrast,
Todd: isn’t it? Uh huh. Well, because most of it takes, in fact, almost all of it takes place inside the mental hospital, and this is sort of a modern update of the old school mental hospital. It’s not quite as silly as having people wandering around muttering to themselves and doing crazy things.
It is like a very long hallways, open rooms. No decoration. I guess, theoretically, nothing for patients to grab, right, and mess around with. Steel tables. Right,
Craig: but, like, literally everything, everything is white. The furniture, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the desks, the, the nurses clothes, like, everything is, And it’s not just white.
It is like stark dreamlike, heavenly white, like a real place,
Todd: not a real place.
Craig: I mean, it looks cool. It’s a really cool set piece and it’s kind of jarring. Like the, the hallways, like you said, are long and they’re kind of at weird angles to one another. And I don’t know. Yeah, it’s. It’s, uh, it’s very, very different in look than the last one.
I mean, it’s still, it’s, it’s very cleanly shot. I still think this one deserved a theatrical release. It’s, it’s a well made movie. It really is. But I’m really glad to hear that you liked it because I was uncertain whether you would or not. And it fares well for you that you did because I feel like more than anything, this movie is teeing up.
Really?
Todd: It’s teeing up the tone, the feel, the everything? Yes. Ah.
Craig: I don’t know if that was entirely intentional. I know that Don Mancini had wanted to take it to television, and also has said that he does also plan to continue the film franchise also. But, I think he at least, especially, You know, all of these movies, or many of them, kind of end open ended.
The story could go on. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but it could. Um, and this one does too, but I feel like with as open ended and with, you know, a lot of new stuff.
Todd: Possibility. Yeah,
Craig: there are a lot of new possibilities at the end of this movie, and things just get started. Things that we’ve never seen before.
Yeah. And it really gives them a lot of room to play in the series, and they do. And so, I, I, I’m glad that you liked this, because I think that that means that you’ll probably really enjoy
Todd: the series. Oh, that’s really good to hear. Because I, I think that the last movie, as I had said in that, in that episode, felt so cold.
And dark, and sinister, and of course Chucky is a sinister, cold, dark character, but he’s also got this sense of humor, and I felt like we had less Chucky in that movie, I mean, he was there, the doll was there. the first half, right? Yeah, his personality kinda wasn’t there, and when his personality was there, it was just the murderous Chucky, there was very little, he had some quips.
You know, here and there, but none of it sounded like he was having fun. You know, this movie has a lot more fun in it. It kind of brings back. I think some of the fun of the of the previous duology trilogy or whatever. What? We kind of split the movies up, right? Right. Right. And seed. And I felt like it struck a really good balance between being a modern or a movie that’s actually scary and actually threatening and bloody and serious.
And having this character in there who that we know and love who’s a little more jokey a little more fun And we get a lot of him in this movie because there are literally a lot of him Yeah in this but
Craig: you don’t know that for a long time and that’s another thing like it kept me guessing. Yeah for a while I’m like, what is happening?
Why are there so many of them and my question was which one is it that yeah, it never occurred to me That it might be more than one and I don’t know that they started to kind of suggest it a little bit But then they’d pull back on it. So I at least had some suspicion, but it really kept me guessing for a while Yeah one of the things that I have consistently liked about this franchise and I’ve said it several times over the course of the last Month is that it keeps trying new things.
It doesn’t get stale The only time it got a little bit stale was with three and that wasn’t Don Mancini’s fault. He had done the first two back to back. They wanted the third one immediately and he said he was out of ideas and I get it. Still not a terrible movie. I still enjoy it. But. It’s maybe the one that does the least in terms of originality.
All of the other ones, it feels like every time they bring something new to the table and they keep you guessing, and, I don’t know, I like it. I liked it too. If I remember correctly, my initial response to this, and I think I said this to people, I may have said it to you. May have settled on the podcast, I don’t know.
But I think my initial response was, I liked that, but I know it’s going to be
Todd: polarizing. Oh, the fact that it, that they add new things and kind of change things up a little bit?
Craig: Yeah. You’ve got multiple Chuckies. You’ve got giant Chucky. You’ve got like
Todd: Yeah. It has the possibility of going The rails. And I think it doesn’t.
And I think like we had said earlier, that is because the writer director Don Mancini has really embraced this and kind of made it his life’s work. It seems like because he is once again in the director’s chair and of course writing this movie. So he’s had full control over this. So, you know, to have one mind working with this all the way through, since the 80s, you’ve got a consistency of ideas, and he has a real clear idea in his head, not necessarily where he always wants to go, I mean, you’ve always got to sit down and come up with ideas, right?
But, at least He can make the characters consistent. He knows all of the lore from the previous movies. He’s a little more reticent to retcon things too much, but also, like you said, not afraid to try some new things. There are a couple places that we’ve even talked about in the previous movies where the rules that seem to have been established in the previous movies are broken, but just in very small ways.
Right, right. Like, I’m still not quite sure now if Chucky is. Human inside like if if he has flesh and blood when he’s in the doll he is I mean he is
Craig: in this movie He is in this
Todd: movie. He wasn’t
Craig: in the last one. Yeah in the last movie They knocked his head off and he wasn’t organic in there. So yeah, I don’t know All of that has been relatively inconsistent, but come on who cares that’s not
Todd: that important Yeah, and the silliest thing probably is how the voodoo chant stuff works at first.
Yeah voodoo chant then He needed an amulet for a while. And now there’s absolutely no need for an amulet and you
Craig: can do variations on the spell. And, uh, right. I really liked that. I like, like, I like the consistency of the chant, but the fact that they changed it and not only did they change it, but I thought that the way they changed it was hilarious.
Yes, because it’s, it’s usually, uh, they do a Dembela. And now that he wants to, like, make a bunch of Chucky’s, he says, Ade Boku Demo.
Todd: It’s a new chant that he found on VoodooForDummies. com. I just think,
Craig: Boku is so funny, like, A lot. Right. I mean, we’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves. I don’t know. The only reason that I’m interested in talking about the very beginning is because, I don’t know, like, I was uncertain of what was happening.
These usually open up in, A very violent way, or at least a set up for something violent, and this shows us a beautiful, I don’t know, skyscraper, very tall building at night. It’s constantly storming in this entire franchise, like, it’s always storming, so it’s raining, but it’s actually a romantic date with Andy and this red haired girl, and she, like, he’s taken her to a really nice place.
Yeah, he must be pretty well off. Well, Don Mancini says he got a bunch of insurance money from all of the murder stuff in the first couple movies. I don’t
Todd: really get that. It’s hard to believe anybody would insure him after one or two of those events.
Craig: But whatever, yeah, I guess he’s independently wealthy because he doesn’t appear to work either.
No. I don’t know. I guess he could go to work and we just don’t see it, but whatever. Anyway, he’s on this date, this pretty girl. He’s taking her out to this nice place, but she immediately kind of starts interrogating him. I’m sorry, I’ve just never known someone who’s
Todd: into guns before. I’m not into
Craig: guns, Rachel.
I have a couple.
Todd: More than the one.
Craig: That doesn’t mean that I’m a fanatic. Okay, it doesn’t mean that I’m not for restrictions and waiting periods and background checks. So what does it mean, Andy?
Todd: I
Craig: just want to be able to protect myself. From what, exactly?
Todd: You Googled
Craig: me. Yeah, I did. And he goes on this whole thing.
He’s like, uh, yeah, when I was six, my babysitter was murdered and my teacher and my, my foster parents and like 39 other people that he knows of something like that. So he, he really feels like he needs to have guns and that’s.
Todd: Pretty understandable. Oh,
Craig: it’s totally understandable. That’s what I was getting at like this establishes.
I feel so bad for him like yeah Chucky chucky at one point. When was it that he told him I killed your childhood
Todd: That was the last movie. He didn’t tell him that He told, he told that to
Craig: Nika. He told Nika that, cause she said, You never, you never killed him. It’s the slowest murder ever, and he said, I, I killed his childhood.
And you see that he did. He, he ruined this
Todd: guy’s life. Yeah, his adulthood as
Craig: well. Yeah, and he, and he’s still dealing with the repercussions, and arguably is a little unhinged, as you I think you would be! Yeah. Um, and the fact that he’s unhinged is evidenced by the fact that he still has O. G. Chucky’s mutilated head.
Living mutilated head in his safe at home. And he takes it out and talks,
Todd: he takes it out, talks to it and tortures it every once in a while. It’s kind of crazy. It’s a brilliant bit of animatronics too, but the head is a, is like half there. So it’s all kind of bloody, but it’s talking and you can see where it’s been charred and where it’s been cut and where it’s been shot, shot.
Like he’s definitely been, been playing with this head, really kind of his own personal therapy, I guess. This reminded me a bit of, uh, Laurie Strode in, in the new Halloween movies, right? Alone, in a cabin, with all this protection, in the woods. Sure, yeah, he’s got a whole arsenal. Sort of waiting for the nemesis to come, which is interesting because he thinks he has Chucky’s head.
So, presumably, he would be safe.
Craig: Right. Like, he also, I don’t know, he’s killed him before and he always comes back, maybe he thinks That is a common thread. Maybe he thinks, if I keep him alive and I keep him secure, he can’t come back to get me, but Yeah. If I kill him, as I’ve done multiple times, he’ll just pop up in the mail again someday.
But I also, like, I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it, I almost felt like Chucky says something like, What about Rachel? Didn’t she want to play?
Now we’ll never know if she’s a natural redhead.
Hehehehehehe Face it, Andy. I’m all you got. Sometimes it’s nice just hanging out on a Friday night. With your best friend. Like, again, I’m just thinking, This doll has this man in a doll’s body has ruined this guy’s life and he has nobody else. He’s
Todd: alone. It’s sort of like in a way, kind of what, what would you call that Stockholm syndrome?
A little bit where you start to sympathize with your tormentor,
Craig: uh, something like
Todd: that. Not that he does, but I mean, there’s a hint of that in there. It’s, it’s complex. It’s kind of complex psychologically and kudos to Don Mancini for going there, you know, for giving us A realistic and, uh, effective portrayal of what Chucky’s victims are gonna be like over the years.
Yeah, they’re messed up. Not a lot of sequels bother with that kind of stuff, you know? They really don’t. And Halloween picked it up later. I have to wonder if it was inspired by this movie, uh, honestly. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Craig: But He asks Andy for a hit off of his blunt, and Andy gives him one, but then Chucky acts like he’s gonna bite him, and scares him, and, and laughs at him, so Andy says, you wanna play?
Let’s play, and he pulls out a blowtorch and starts torturing him, which, good for him, I mean, like you said, therapy, I guess. But then
Todd: that question still remains, because, uh, at the end of the first, of the last movie, we saw that Chucky was in the process anyway. Of putting himself in the body of, what’s her name?
Annie Alice, A young girl. The end of that movie, who was the nephew of Nika right.
Craig: Nice, but yeah, close now. Nice, right?
Todd: Having trouble with words this morning. I mean,
Craig: there, there is there, you know, there’s a lot of gender fluidity stuff going on in these movies. So yeah, but you that you, that was something that troubled you.
Because at the end of the last movie, by the way, I don’t know if you know this, but that scene with Andy at the end, the post credits scene, that wasn’t in the theatrical cut. That was only in the, oh, and there was no theatrical cut. That wasn’t in the original release. Oh, really? Um, they, they added it to the unrated version.
Oh. And you were bothered by that. You’re like, I don’t get it. He was going into the girl. What happened? Why is he back in the doll? Why is he here? You were you
Todd: satisfied? Yeah, of course. Okay. Yeah, it’ll it’ll make sense now because I think as we already said, there are multiple Chuckies now, which actually works.
I don’t mind talking about this now. I mean, we’re gonna go through the plot of the movie, but let’s talk about this whole concept. It works because, in a way, it was already established in Seed. The One Doll, uh, Chucky’s son, went into two bodies. Uh huh. Right? Like, the split personality or whatever, the Right.
The male side went into the little boy and the female side went into the little girl. And so it actually had been done before just not a big deal was made out of it so although like we said Chuckie in this movie says that he found a new chant that allowed that to happen so right but was I terribly confused because I kind of knew I mean I have to say I think you let it slip earlier on that there were going to be multiple Chuckie’s I think maybe it was when we talked about the whole series way back it probably was our podcast or so I wasn’t I was more interested in figuring out how and what.
And like you said, so who’s the real one? And this brings up like a big, one of those big sci fi questions, right? I read a lot of sci fi, watch a lot of sci fi, and there are always these things where, you know, you download a personality into a computer and then can upload it back into your body, or you could live forever, you know, just by making a backup copy of yourself.
But then that raises this immediate question, like who’s the real you, right? And is that really you? So your body dies, but then are you going to wake up in the new body when your soul’s been kind of downloaded into it? Like what’s what is that? Right? Like even the Star Trek has the thing where with the transport of the teleporter Which actually just takes you completely apart bit by bit And then reassembles you using the molecules on that planet.
There’s a question, do you die every time you go through that transport process? Uh huh. It’s so, I mean, maybe the answer is they’re all Chucky. Ha ha ha! They’re all equally the same guy. Okay,
Craig: alright, so I can kind of, they are. He says in this movie that he learned, he got on, Voodoo4Dummies. com and he found a spell where you can split your soul into pieces and put a piece of that in whatever you want.
He says anything with two legs and an arm for stabbing. Anything with two legs and an arm for stabbing, he can put himself in. And, uh, moving forward, we’re to believe that. Each of those is a part of the O. G., but I think we’re also now I’m extending beyond the end of this movie to I think that we are also to believe that the O.
G. Chucky is Is still around and is somehow different from the other ones. It gets really complicated because moving forward when there are multiple ones, sometimes fairly regularly, they have unique personalities. Oh, really? So I don’t know if you would say that maybe those are just different parts of Chucky’s soul, like.
Maybe he’s got a, a nice part, maybe he’s got,
Todd: who knows. Child like part, a goofy part, a serious
Craig: part. Right, right, maybe, I don’t know and I don’t know, I think it’s a little muddy. And that’s alright, I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me.
Todd: Thinking too deeply into this too. Well, the
Craig: other thing I was thinking about is like, is there just, is one’s soul infinite?
Like, are you gonna run out? Like, and what happens, what happens if you
Todd: run out?
Craig: What do you get? Is it like a Voldemort kind of scenario?
Todd: If you make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, eventually does that, you know, those last few ones, are they kind of limited? In a way. Right, right. I don’t know. Who knows?
Craig: All interesting questions that we are not going to get the answers to.
Todd: Nor do we need to worry too much about. Right.
Craig: But, the movie is largely about Nika. And it is basically One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Chucky.
Todd: In a way, yeah, you’re kind of right. Which is ironic considering the fact that Brad Dourif’s breakout role was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Right.
Craig: And he’s great. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. He’s amazing. He’s so good in that movie. But, I don’t know, like, Nika has been convinced by her therapist that the whole Chucky thing was all in her head and she killed her whole family because she was clinically jealous of her sister and overly protective of Alice.
So she killed everybody else so that she could have Alice all to herself. And she can never, even though, you know, she knows it’s because she was sick or whatever, she can never forgive herself because Alice could never forgive her for that. And Alice is somewhere else and she doesn’t know where she is and she’ll never see her again.
But the doctor says, since you realize that you were sick and you understand that Chucky was all in your head, we’re going to move you to this medium security facility. And they do. Keeping in mind, she’s a paraplegic, like, I don’t think that she would be a huge flight
Todd: risk anyway. Yeah, that’s actually a very good point.
So they
Craig: do, they immediately move her to this place, and then, for the next while, we just kind of see her meeting people, and like, we meet this cast of characters who are Interesting, I guess. Yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s kind of one of those things where I appreciate them trying to give all of these characters unique qualities and, and, and making them more than just fodder for the kills.
Yeah. But I know that’s what they are. So let’s just get to it.
Todd: I also appreciate them not taking it too far. You know, you could really go far into camp with these characters in a mental institution. And most horror movies do this. In fact, a lot of mainstream movies until fairly recently would do this, you know, Oh, this is the one with a crazy twitch.
And not only do they have this twitch, but you’re going to see it every time you see them. And this person’s constantly seeing visions. And every time they’re on the screen, they’re going to see visions. And It might even be a source of laughter and comedy. This movie, I felt like these characters were fairly real people.
I was really on board with the reality of the portrayal of these folks. There’s the, um, Malcolm? Or is, or Michael? I don’t
Craig: know. We, you don’t know at first. She meets him and he’s very nice. The first person she meets is The nurse, Carlos, I think is his name, right? And he’s gay and has an ailing husband and he’s kind of nice to her and she thanks him for that.
And he says, don’t get me wrong. We’re not going to be friends. Yeah, I just, I’m just doing my job, which I get weird that that’s, that’s a very healthy relationship. Like we can treat each other. With kindness, but we’re not
Todd: friends. At least he’s being honest and establishing that up front, I suppose. Yeah, but it’s not very warm.
Craig: No, but I think it’s perfectly professional. These are crazy people. Yeah,
Todd: that’s true.
Craig: Um, she is a mass murderer. Or multiple murderer, I don’t know. They ever make a big difference out of it.
Todd: Everyone wants to keep their distance from her, you know, and that, that’s understandable as well.
Craig: But then she, then she meets this one lady.
This lady was probably my favorite, Angela, who thinks she’s a ghost. And she introduces herself as a ghost. She’s like, Can you see me? Yeah. Thank God. None of the others can see me. Please don’t be afraid. I’m not afraid of you. Good. I won’t hurt you. I just need someone to talk to. I spent my whole life here, then I died right here in this room a long, long time ago.
That’s awful. Angela,
Todd: we can all see you. And then she just floats away.
Craig: I just, I thought that scene was hilarious because I was like, Are there ghosts in
Todd: this
Craig: movie? But then this guy introduces himself and I don’t remember what he introduces himself as Michael I think and and he seems super nice And they hit it off to the point where within 10 seconds, they’re banging in the stairway.
Yeah And I mean I get it But the other thing I was like wow her experience has changed her Yeah, because didn’t you very much get that? She was very sheltered and likely virginal In the last movie.
Todd: I did, and she was also, I mean, she was a tough cookie. She’s always been a tough cookie, but she was a little sweeter, and a little, I don’t know.
Now, she’s seen shit, you know, and she’s kinda mean, and relatively speaking, she’s kinda hard. In this movie. Oh, yeah, and you would be, you know, that’s what would happen, but you’re right. Her experience has changed her a lot. She’s banging that guy and she’s kind of got a bit of a scowl on her face. She’s treating everyone she meets with a little bit of skepticism.
She’s not out there looking for friends, but this Malcolm guy is probably the closest thing to a friend she’s going to have in here. Right. Even though they have sex in the stairwell, she still keeps her distance. She’s still very much kind of setting herself apart and, and staying alone. This has to be hard, you know, when you’re sentenced to this life, you don’t have much control.
No. Right. And I’m sure she doesn’t feel as quote unquote crazy as the people around her.
Craig: Probably none of them do. And yeah, or like a lot
Todd: of them don’t. A lot of them probably don’t, right? They, they, they, they’re all probably, why am I here? And, and that’s. Gotta be hard. Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine. You know, my mom worked at a psychiatric facility, but you know, people would come through it.
They, they weren’t sentenced to live there for the rest of their lives or for an indeterminate amount of time. It was very much a rehabilitation place and the expectation was that after a while, they’re, they’re gonna be ready to go out and face the world. And this does not seem like that kind of place.
These people seem like they’re all going to be there probably forever. Although there is a doctor here who has got some very interesting and perhaps progressive, perhaps regressive ways and theories of taking care of these people. And uh, what’s the doctor’s name? I
Craig: don’t know, I just kept calling him Dr.
Foley. Dr. Foley he’s got all these
Todd: weird therapies like the first scene that we see of her after we cut away from Andy is there’s doing like electro shock therapy on her which I thought was interesting because I thought that had pretty much gone away except in very extreme circumstance I was gonna
Craig: say it’s kind of a last resort anymore but they do still do it I I actually just recently read about this and that the shock therapy that they use bears no resemblance to what it looks like in movies.
People are not thrashing around as insane voltages running through them. It’s, it’s very controlled. It’s, it’s, you know, small doses probably delivered. Yeah. It’s as safe as it can be. It’s not widely used, but it is still used. Carrie Fisher swore by it. She was, I think she was bipolar, and she would have incredible peaks and valleys, and sometimes shock treatment therapy was the only thing that could pull her out of some of those
Todd: valleys.
Well, to be honest, there’s probably something behind it, because right now, we are getting major startups that are coming up, tech startups, that are claiming that they can manipulate your brain in positive ways by delivering very pointed electrical currents to the right times and the right places. To help boost your memory.
This was literally in the news this week, but I’ve been following this for the last of six or seven years. And so, yeah, I mean, your brain is, your body has electricity flowing through it in, in small amounts, and your brain is arguably kind of a big electrical machine, so it’s definitely not outside the realm of, it’s not quackery.
Right. The way it was done in the past has been a bit of quackery, but now there’s some solid science behind some of it. But then this guy goes into other, other territories as well, which I was questioning, like, is he really clever? Is he really smart? Is he using these modern, uh, techniques? Or is he a little psychotic himself?
Is he playing
Craig: himself? He seems sadistic
Todd: to me. He does seem sadistic, and we find out later that he’s probably even more so. It’s interesting that in this stark white hospital, his office is the exact opposite. It is dark and black, and it almost, it’s like the only place of warmth, really, in the whole hospital.
But that said, it doesn’t really feel like a warm place to be. But yeah, that’s the, that’s the black to the white, and I thought that was a really interesting choice of design.
Craig: Sure. Yeah, it’s far less. It’s not sterile like everything else. It looks like human beings actually would use that space.
Todd: That’s the place where they all come together to do work.
Well,
Craig: yeah, they do. They do group. And the people that we’ve already mentioned, plus there’s A very, uh, an angry, paranoid Asian lady, what is her name? Claire. Claire. And she’s very suspicious of Nika. I probably would be too, for all they know, she just killed a
Todd: bunch of people. Oh, she’s pissed. She’s like, why is this murderer here with us?
I’m scared for my life. And I kind of would be too. I get it. I
Craig: totally get it. Yeah. And then Angela, who’s the ghost, Says something like he’s coming Chucky called me on the phone He said to tell you he’s coming for you, which you think she’s just a nutter But as it turns out Chucky did call her on the phone and talk to her.
Oh boy, but then dr Foley again, I I know that like aversion therapy is a thing and like facing your fears is a therapeutic type thing but I just can’t imagine that in all these movies, people just keep throwing Chucky dolls at the victims. I
Todd: know, right? They either just happen to be there or they’re just like, Hey, I thought this would help you.
Or, Oh, I’m going to give this as a present to your niece. Just as much as Chucky is mailed to people, people seem to deliberately bring Chucky back into these poor people’s
Craig: lives. All the time. This guy, this guy went out of his way to find one, one of the original ones that was named Chucky. He got it from a Hot Topic.
Todd: That was hilarious,
Craig: actually. The, oh, one of the few things that bothered me about this movie was the Chucky voice is different. Did you notice that? Yeah. Like the doll voice is different. It feels
Todd: different. Is that just because Brad Dourif is so old now? No,
Craig: not well. I mean, his voice did sound a little bit different too, but I’m talking about the.
I can’t do it. It’s too high. But the, the check
Todd: you want to play. Oh, that.
Craig: Yeah. I didn’t, it’s not been Brad Dorff. Doesn’t voice that. The right Brad door. If only voices, Charles Lee Ray, the, the possessed doll, the, the voice of the actual toy is not him. And it’s different in this one. And it bugged me because it’s been the same in all of them.
And I’m like, come on, you have to have just, just reuse the audio. He only says like three
Todd: things. That’s true. You can just literally cut and paste it from the previous
Craig: movies. But again, that’s, that’s a minor complaint, but yeah, like he pulls it out and it’s like, and she’s like, no, it’s just a doll. It was me.
I did it. And then there’s another character, her name, Madeline, who is apparently in there. We learn over the course of the next half hour or so she’s in there because she suffered from postpartum depression and killed her own baby. And now she’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but she thinks that Chucky is her baby.
And like, she takes it and starts treating it like her baby. And that’s fine. Like, Nika doesn’t really seem particularly concerned at this point. Yeah. Because I do think that he really has her convinced that it was all in her head, that
Todd: she’s crazy. Yeah, I was unsure about that until this moment. And then, you know, to see, to see the result of this scene, that proved it.
I was like, oh, okay, I guess she does really think that she is crazy. So, that, that, you know, made sense. And that’s an interesting choice, too. A lot of times, In movies and stories like this, we, you know, the whole story is that character is absolutely convinced that, that they’re not crazy and they’re the only ones and nobody will believe them.
She’s not going there. There’s nothing in this movie about her trying to convince people that she’s not crazy and that Chucky was real. And that’s refreshing, actually, to be honest. Cause then it, it allows space for the movie to go in some other interesting directions, I think. Well, that, okay, so
Craig: that Chuck, there’s already one Chucky there.
And then immediately, I feel like Nika is called out of this meeting. And somebody says, you have a visitor. Yeah. And she walks down to somebody’s office. Is it the doctor that’s in there? I don’t remember who’s in there. But, who should be waiting for her? The doctor, Nika, I’d like you to meet Miss Valentine and it’s Jennifer Tilly.
And Nika looking great, by the way, she looks different. She’s kind of got long blonde hair, but she, her face looks beautiful. She looks fantastic. And she’s just kind of sitting there filing her nails and Nika rolls in and says, God, you look familiar. Has anybody ever told you, you look just like Jennifer Tilly?
And she says, yeah, I get that a lot.
Oh my God. The first time I saw that I had to pause it because I couldn’t stop laughing. I thought it was the funniest thing because things are getting so convoluted because that is Jennifer Tilly, but it’s really Tiffany and Steve.
But anyway, the doctor is like, she was Alice’s guardian and they kind of trade jabs about something like Nika tells Tiffany she doesn’t look very motherly because I think Tiffany said, you’re not like what I expected. I expected you to be more formidable or like somebody who could actually do something or something like that.
And she’s like, well, you don’t seem very motherly. And then she’s like, well, how is Alice? She goes, Oh, sweetie, she’s dead. And, and Nika’s like, what? What happened? And she said, well, I’m no doctor, but I think it was a broken heart.
Todd: She’s just there to dig into her.
Craig: Oh yeah. She is just here to grind glass into this woman’s heart.
But then she says, but wait, I think Alice would have wanted you to have something. And she pulls out another Chucky. And, and the doctor’s like, wait, is that the actual? And, and she’s like, no, no, Alice’s doctor gave her this. She, they thought it would help with therapy. So now there’s two. And then, and then Tiffany just leaves.
I don’t know what happens next.
Todd: Yeah, well, I think this is, this is when Chucky starts to animate and walk around.
Craig: Well, the, the, my, one of my favorite scenes is two people are holding Chucky dolls, walking towards one another in a hallway. The two dolls pass by one another, and at this point, we still don’t really know I mean, we know that there are multiple dolls in the building, but we don’t know that there are any of them are animated and so I’m still thinking, Oh, which one is it?
Which one is it? And I don’t know. They, they make the Fiona, Fiona, Nika makes the doctor test to make sure that, but you’re right. This is when they, and, and Chucky, one of them. One of them reveals itself to move. We see its eyes move.
Todd: Yeah. You know, obviously not to the characters, but as everyone’s left the room, it, there’s this long hold on Chucky, which is just brilliant.
It’s this long hold on him. And we’re sitting there waiting for him to move, like move, move, move. You gotta move. And then. He moves, and I, thank you, that was so satisfying. But yeah, at some point during group, I think they’re, the two dolls are there together. And, uh, she makes the doctor prove that one of them’s not real, and so he goes over and burns But at this point, somebody’s
Craig: already died, that’s
Todd: why That’s why she does it, yeah, because That’s why she does it.
Because Chucky
Craig: animates. Because the ghost lady, yeah. And he comes, and he’s gonna kill Nika, But he finds that she has already slit her own wrist and is bleeding out, but she wakes up in the morning and by her bed is a pool of blood that Chucky has written. What not yet,
Todd: not just yet or something like
Craig: that, and he has crudely sewn her up.
Todd: I guess this is possible,
Craig: whatever, which she hides from the nurse, but then they also find Angela dead. Same thing, Chucky had slit her wrist with the broken spoke from the wheelchair, and there’s a pool of blood at her bedside, and it says, Chucky did it. Now,
Todd: Chucky on his way to Nika’s room, Angela pops out and looks at him and does the whole, can you see me thing.
Can you see me, yeah. They have a really interesting exchange here. Where’s
Craig: Nika? Last door on the right, you can see me. Yeah, I can see you. Don’t be afraid. What? I’m not going to hurt you. You f ing with me? No, I’m not. Tell you the truth, I’m happy to have the company. Even if you aren’t real. Okay. Let me explain something to you.
I am a vintage, mass marketed children’s toy from the 80s, standing right in front of you, holding a very sharp scalpel. No, you’re not. Yes, I am. I’m a schizophrenic. I see things. Aren’t you the crazy bitch I talked to last night on the phone? Sometimes I hear things too. Okay, lady. You know what? You’re next.
I’m gonna be right back. Okay, you’re next. Just because she annoys
Todd: him. That’s where the comedy of this comes in. Like, they had this really bizarre conversation that only a crazy woman who thinks she’s dead and doesn’t mind that she’s talking to a doll. And this killer doll was like, Who the f are you and what the f are you talking about kind of attitude and then at the end all right well I’m coming back for you, you’re next.
Yeah, yeah. It’s great. This is where I like the, you know, like I said, this is where I found the movie more charming than the previous one, because I felt like there was more of the, the old Chucky that I knew and loved in it. Yeah, I,
Craig: I agree. There, we check back in with Andy really quick just to find out that he has read that Nika has been moved, but that somebody else in the hospital has died.
And he, we see him watching, he has a video where he is in Doc Foley’s office with the Chucky head. Yeah. Proving that it’s alive. But the doctor just won’t believe this and I still like, I just am not sure what to think of that doctor. Like, because he says to Andy, he says, Andy, are you sure that you’re just not crazy?
I mean, come on, the thing was in the
Todd: room. He could prove it if he wants to. He just doesn’t want to. He’s like, oh, that’s a, that’s a clever bit of animatronics, whatever. And, oh, come on,
Craig: come on. I really started to wonder, and I remember the first time that I watched this, I wondered if the doctor was in on it with.
Chuckie, right? And I don’t I don’t think he is. No, he’s not. In fact, Chuckie hates him. Yeah, because it turns out he’s
Todd: a big perv. Oh, God, he’s an
Craig: awful person who’s been molesting Nika. Yeah, it’s terrible. But then there’s the whole test she makes. And I don’t really understand this either, because she makes the doctor.
Hold fire to Chucky’s fingers, one of them, until they melt and elongate into this long claw, which makes him stand out from the other ones, which they intentionally did. All of the Chucky’s here, they tried to give them some defining characteristics so that you could tell between them. I don’t know why, they all have the same personality.
Right. Doesn’t make any difference. Yeah. But, I also don’t understand that scene, because Is, has Chucky just gotten really good at tolerating pain?
Todd: Yeah, I know. I don’t get it either. It should have, according to the previous rules, he should have revealed himself. Is
Craig: he not in that
Todd: one yet? Oh, that’s a possibility, I suppose.
Yeah, maybe. Well, it’s sort of like the thing, right? Like, now it’s a puzzle for us. Well, which one is he? Is he hopping around? What’s going on there? And that’s, that’s kind of an interesting thing to occupy your mind when you’re watching this movie and keep you guessing. It does lend itself to some possibilities before it’s revealed that he’s pretty much in all the dolls.
Craig: Well, and we don’t know. Okay, so Nika suspect believes that it’s alive at this point, at least one of them. And it gets further complicated when the lady who’s treating the doll as her baby takes it outside and Nika watches them as though it looks like they’re talking to one another and then the lady hugs the doll so that it’s facing Nika and the doll flips her off so there’s no doubt she knows for sure that it’s Chucky and multiple Malcolm because the guy that she banged has dissociative personality disorder or whatever that’s called and he has like multiple personalities or whatever.
He goes out it appears that the doll tells Madeline to throw it in an open grave because they apparently have an open very people who died yeah they have a graveyard right outside so she throws the doll in there and then. She like points down to it but then she pushes malcolm in and then malcolm lifts the doll out but then malcolm like lifts his head up above the earth and looks at nika and gives her like a knowing look i still don’t know what to make of this because i believe.
That. And I think that Nika believes That Chucky has now possessed this guy. Yeah. Are we to believe that too? Cause he starts acting real weird. We’re
Todd: to believe it, but later on, there’s something that he says that doesn’t jive with the actual.
Craig: Well, I have a theory about that too, but. Oh, you do? Yeah, I do.
But well, I’ll just say it now. Who cares? At the end she finds him like over a dead body and well this is getting into some complicated things but he claims to have killed somebody but it turns out he didn’t really and he says no i’m charles nobody calls me chuckie but then there’s some dialogue i think that he was possessed or is possessed by chuckie a part of him but because he has multiple personality disorder that part of him Is now just one of him inside.
Well, for sure. I believe
Todd: that
Craig: Chuckie talks to him and says, you couldn’t handle it or something like that. So I think he did possess him, but I think that it didn’t take well, or that it’s like, like what happens if you possess somebody who has multiple personalities, you know, are you only possessing one personality?
I think that’s kind of, I don’t know. Who cares?
Todd: I thought that was what, The idea was supposed to be that now he has the Chucky personality sort of added to his arsenal of personalities. Yes, that’s what I think too. But when his Chucky personality comes up, he says, well, nobody calls me Chucky. That’s not true.
He actually preferred to be
Craig: called that. I don’t think that’s the real Charles Lee Ray part of him. I think that’s him. Faking.
Todd: Faking. By now you’re saying he’s gone, and Right,
Craig: right. Oh, okay. But, I don’t know. We don’t need to get that much into it. So, what happens of the rest? The Asian lady goes to throw away one of the dolls.
I hate when I re I hate when I do that. She has a name. Claire goes to try to throw away one of the dolls, but it bites her, and so she knows it’s alive, but they think she’s nuts, so they restrain her, they strap her to a table, and sedate her. And she’s terrified and like crying because they also leave the Chucky doll in there with her while they go to tend to something else.
I don’t know something else going on. They always
Todd: do this in movies. A
Craig: lot happens pretty quickly, right? But they leave her in there and you know We get the classic Chucky’s feet scurrying along and eventually she looks over and he’s just standing there looking at her with a wicked grin And she can’t move or talk or anything.
She’s conscious, but Out of it. And he is holding a bottle of compressed air and he says, compressed, does that mean what I think it means? And in what I can only assume is a nod back to bride of Chucky, he throws the tank down on the ground so that it explodes like a rocket and shoots up through an enormous skylight.
Uh huh. Directly above her, and the thick skylight glass shatters and falls down on her, and it’s snowing outside, and this all happens in slow motion. The glass and the snow fall. It’s a great shot. It looks fantastic. It is.
Todd: So, I have some questions about the snow. Because, so she gets decapitated, it’s really cool actually, and cut up by the glass, much like the people in Bride.
And then there’s this beautiful scene, like you said, of just her body laying there and the snow falling down on it. Later on, I think Claire has Either a dream, or some visions, or Nika. Nika, sorry. Has a dream or some visions where there’s snow falling on her as well. I also remember in the previous movie, after she was wrestling with Chucky in the elevator, and she stabs him in the back and pulls out the knife, there’s stuff that falls on her that Looks like snow and I don’t remember that that was an unanswered question for me because I wasn’t sure if that was like some of his stuffing that went up in the air and came down.
I think
Craig: so. Yeah, but it’s
Todd: treated very similarly. It’s like slow motion and that’s coming down and clear looks up at it and kind of kind of like you look up at snow and I thought is she going into some kind of visionary state or something like that. Yeah. Is this gonna transition into a snowy scene? And it never does, but it’s a very stark thing.
Craig: It’s a, it’s a nightmare.
Todd: I’m talking about the previous movie. Oh, right. So, to see that come out again, very prominently in this movie, like, two more times, that was a connection that I wasn’t sure what to make of. I don’t think you can deny there’s some kind of stylistic visual connection there. I don’t know.
Craig: I, I think it’s just a good visual. I mean, you could say the same thing about, well, it’s, you know, similar in the, the imagery to that scene from Bride. I mean, it may, it may just be an additional callback.
Todd: I guess so, but it’s just, it’s just kind of weird to have snow indoors in three different scenes across two movies.
Yeah.
Craig: But anyway. Well, and this time it’s a dream because we find out that her doctor basically brought her here so that he would have easier access to her because he hypnotizes her and molests her, which is disgusting. And fortunately we don’t get to see anything and he’s just a big sicko, but he has her hypnotized.
And she kind of giggles and he’s like, what’s so funny? And she says, Chucky, he’s right behind you. And of course the doctor doesn’t turn around, but then he gets knocked out. And even Chucky is like skeeved out by the doctor. He’s like, holy shit. And they call me sick. This guy is diabolical. What a piece of work.
I’m actually a little envious. He’s like, I don’t, I don’t know whether to kill him or take notes.
Todd: And
Craig: the first time this happens, Nika is hypnotized. And then she wakes up seemingly on that bed that Claire had just died on. And then she wakes up again, I think like on the floor in the hallway and she looks up and she’s lying at the feet of Alice.
And Alice says he’s coming or something like that. And then you start hearing these thunderous footsteps and then a enormous Chucky is standing over her as she lays on the floor and it turns out it’s a dream, right? But I don’t remember what happens next. We know that Andy is on the way. Tiffany calls Andy.
She calls him and taunts him and is like, The cult is growing every day. Andy knows something weird is going on because these killings are happening. And he thinks he has the only Chucky, but Chucky says something like, Did you think I was the only one? Yeah. And now Tiffany says there’s three of us and, and the cult is getting bigger by the day and she taunts him and laughs.
So he’s on his way there. With another Chucky that he pulls out of a closet and this one has like a buzz cut.
Todd: What is this? Why does he have another Chucky doll that he’s given a buzz cut to in his closet? Why and how? I don’t
Craig: get that bit. Well, and, and then the, the buzz cut doll gets delivered to the doctor who just is like, I don’t know why somebody would send me this and just leaves it on his desk.
Andy’s trying to get in, and this is the point, the doctor gets skeevy with her again, Chucky hits him AGAIN in exactly the same way and knocks him out, and both of these times, he’s tried to get Nika to kill the doctor, which in my opinion, she would have every right to do, but, um, she won’t, because like, she’s like, I’m not a murderer, and he’s like, not yet.
And there’s like the Chucky conference.
Todd: That’s right. Well, is that before, after Madeline does goes through the whole thing with it’s after, yeah, I don’t even know how important it is, but Madeline, who, you know, has murdered her child and still feels guilty about it, smothers it with a pillow. She’s, she’s all nice and sweet to it.
Oh, she’s breastfeeding it. Which is, oh my god, that was so
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