Starring Aubrey Plaza, Andy Barclay, Brian Tyree Henry, Mark Hamill

Directed by Lars Klevberg

United Artists, out now

A young mum brings home a faulty toy to cheer up her thirteen-year-old son, unaware that this isn’t just any old reject.

Lars Klevberg’s new take on the popular horror doll franchise is an unlikely candidate for the reboot treatment, not least because the original series seemed to be going strong. Tom Holland’s 1988 original was still spawning sequels as recently as 2017 with seventh instalment Cult of Chucky, so going back to point zero feels a little redundant. And while this 2019 version is perfectly good fun, it does beg the question ‘why?’

Characters have the same name as in the original – mom Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza – Legion), son Andy Barclay (Gabriel Bateman – Lights Out) and Detective Norris (Brian Tyree Henry – Hotel Artemis), but the premise is very different. Instead of Brad Dourif’s dying serial killer supernaturally possessing a Good Guys doll, a disgruntled Vietnamese toymaker just turns off the safety protocols on the chip that regulates a Buddi doll, a wi-fi connected animated character who interfaces with other home products.

Chucky is voiced by a playful Mark Hamill, but the doll just doesn’t look right in the face. The blue dungarees and striped top are the same, but his visage is just so ugly, eschewing the cuteness of the Good Guys doll before it transformed into evil Chucky. The deaths are inventive and gory, and most of the time the victims are deserving of their fates, though quite why Detective Norris’ mother dies so horribly is one of the movie’s missteps. Andy is older than the original kid, allowing him to team up with friends in a Stranger Things dynamic, and it all ends in a frantic scene at a shop as the new Buddi 2 model is released.

Verdict: A curiously unnecessary reboot that might as well have been another instalment in the original series. Fun as far as it goes but beyond the Web 2.0 connectivity between Chucky and other gizmos, doesn’t have an awful lot new to say. 6/10

Nick Joy