Child's Play 3 Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: After magically resurrecting himself, Chucky once again seeks out Andy who now resides at a military boarding school.

Review: I know a lot of fans regard this as the worst Chucky movie, but I humbly disagree. Sure, it's the worst "Child's Play" movie, I'll give you that, but I loathe Chucky 4 and fucking hate Chucky 5. Now I am not saying this movie is good, because it's not, but it's not as bad as it would appear at a glance; I rank it more as below average with its lame attempt to keep the story moving. They clearly had no idea what they were doing with this entry, but decided to try and milk the franchise for all it was worth. Unfortunately, this film suffers from being made in the early '90s, when horror movies were at their worst (financially and often story-wise), and that's honestly the biggest reason for its failure. And, as most know, the main reason this era is notorious for bad horror movies is because audiences were burned out on the icons, ridiculous sequels, and the fans had "grown up" (at least that's what those sellouts told themselves).

The movie actually opens eight years after part two and with the original ending to "Child's Play's" script with the Good Guy's blood pouring into the plastic at the Play Pals factory. Although, I don't know how that translates into Chucky magically resurrecting himself...but sure! This doesn't even make sense, how were Chucky's remains once again not collected as evidence?! Someone did die at the factory. This movie implies they just abandoned the factory and left it as is. That doesn't even follow common business practice of liquidating your assets. Killing me here. Plus, Play Pals is shown to not be out of business...so why was the factory even abandoned to begin with? Wouldn't it be converted to keep producing whatever other stupid toys they sell? And the cobwebs too--wasn't that a bit much? Okay, I need to stop thinking about this film rationally. All we need to know is Chucky is back...yay! And first order of business: kill that asshole, Mr. Sullivan, who surprisingly survived part two. This part tried to be scary but ended up making no sense, but at least we got to see some corporate douchebag die and that's all the audience really wants, right? Besides, Mr. Sullivan conveniently had the records pertaining to Andy's whereabouts, in a pre-internet era, even though Andy hadn't arrived there yet. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I mean, who cares about how Mr. Sullivan would know this, how that computer would access such information, or how the fuck Chucky even knows how to operate a computer! Okay, to be fair, I like this opening and kind of wish they spent more time with Chucky at Play Pals; that scenario actually opened up some options to do things interestingly with the plot.

For those that have been hating on Alex Vincent, he's obviously been replaced as Andy since this is supposed to be a futuristic setting; though, the new guy, Justin Whalin, admittedly looks like Andy all grown up. Putting Andy in military school is...uhh, unique, to say the least. I don't see him ending up at a place like that, but when you have to keep writing Andy's mom out of the script, I suppose this was the best they could come up with. I'd like to say the military school allowed for some cool ideas to be presented, but I'd be lying. It's pretty much the same bullshit as usual with Chucky trying to get Andy until he realizes he can possess someone else. Hmm, you mean, like possibly possessing the CEO of Play Pals and having a lot of power and influence to get away with your alleged strangulation fetish?! And you know what, no one thought it was suspicious, yet again, that now their CEO is murdered right after discussing how a killer doll took down the company to begin with? And they decide to release the toy anyway? And the police didn't notice that the last thing active in Mr. Sullivan's computer was Andy's current whereabouts? AND how the fuck did Chucky mail himself to the military school?! Ahhh!

Anyway, all that happens at the military school is we meet douchebag characters we know will die and Andy's little love interest. Pretty much Andy is being a little bitch trying to stop Chucky while Chucky is going about getting a new body in the most roundabout way imaginable. Eventually the school plays some annual war-game in which Chucky has replaced the paint-pellets in their rifles with real bullets. Besides not having enough time to accomplish this task, didn't Chucky think it could be, I don't know, just a tad dangerous for himself and could possibly get his new body killed along with the kid he's trying to possess?! After some zany antics, the main characters all end up at this carnival coincidentally nearby. As with Chucky at Play Pals, I wish this carnival setting would have played a more significant role in the story since it opened up a lot of possibilities that end up being shoehorned in at the last 10 minutes. Chucky continues to get fucked up before technically succeeding at possessing the dumb kid he's after. But since we can't have that, we change Chucky's little voodoo chant to be like 2 minutes longer than usual so Andy can save the kid and knock Chucky into a large, industrial fan, chopping him to pieces. The film ends with Andy acting like everything will be fine even though more than likely he will be blamed for multiple murders with him being the only likely suspect after all. I love happy endings.

Alright, so maybe the movie is bad. But hey, there are one liners, Chucky has on lipstick while trying to be scary at one point, Chucky screams like a little girl when almost being killed in a trash compactor, and we learn what a "gun" really is--so there's that. Eh, I don't know, I want to say the whole movie just sucks, but I have to factor in that this is Chucky and you can't exactly expect much. Everything simply feels so bland and predictable with major emphasis on mediocrity. Chucky himself is still amusing, while not being too over the top, and watching him lose limbs and get half his face ripped off comes with the territory. I'd place this entry right in the middle as far as quality--it sucks but not as much as part 4 and 5.

Notable Moment: When Chucky kills that little bitch, Mr. Sullivan. Well, it took three movies, but it's about time this asshole lives up to the title Lakeshore strangler.

Final Rating: 4.5/10