Child's Play (1988)
7/10
An Essential Slasher Flick
27 January 2019
Child's Play is a rambunctious horror flick that's saturated to the brim with bizzaro coatings of sadistical and dexterously flavorful gallows humor. Similar to how The Evil Dead nearly redefined the horror genre through its utilizations of subtle dark comedy, Child's Play annexes onto that train of sinisterness with its iconically blood-curdling yet, comical, plastic and porcelain antagonist, Chucky, voiced sensationally by the underrated Brad Dourif. Sure, a good loaf of the movie is outdated and the writing can be preposterous at times but, I don't know what more you could've hoped for in an 80s slasher semi-parody that's word for word about a killer, toy doll.

Child's Play spotlights astonishingly stellar performances from both the child actor, Alex Vincent, and the mother, Catherine Hicks, each careening in on a scenario of blame and delusion when people begin suspecting the insanity of them when something questionably unimaginable begins to emerge.

Quicknote but, the puppeteering and animatronics are suprememly impressive and for the most part, methodical. Also, the score-while elementary-dabbles with its duck-soup-like beats in a blisteringly fruitful manner, chiefly within the film's opening shootout.

Child's Play is a horror genre freak-out that could've been a lot lamer than its story-lines may had inclined you to anticipate. You can genuinely tell here that the filmmakers sympathetically wanted to forge something unusually intoxicating. (Verdict: B)
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