4 out of 5

Directed by: Don Mancini

This is the one.  The Child’s Play franchise has reinvented itself a couple of times now, into camp with Bride of Chucky, and back-to-basics with Curse of Chucky, but despite some slight genre shifts from film to film, one of the boons of having creator / writer Don Mancini (and producer David Kirschner) involved, in either writer or director or writer / director capacity with each flick is that the series has actually maintained a fairly consistent ‘mythology,’ and sense of progress.  There’s also an unusually high quality of style and acting on display, considering this is now a 7-deep straight to video horror franchise, and Mancini’s entries have been rather especially strong visually.  Cult of Chucky continues all of that, but benefits from the series’ history as well, able to chuckle at the various modes in which the movies have operated (maybe sometimes chuckling a little bit too hard, true) and combining successful elements from each.  Mancini has also proven skilled at pushing the story into unexpected directions, and despite the ‘insane asylum’ locked room concept being something of a trope, he does it again in Cult, following up on Nica’s (Fiona Douriff) being committed at the end of movie six by having her doctor (Michael Therriault) make the wonderfully wise decision of confronting a Chucky doll.  …Or maybe two, or maybe three.

Having done the ‘unseen stalker’ bit in Curse of Chucky, Mancini wisely doesn’t play around here: we get to see Chucky in action pretty immediately, and if curse underplayed the kills, we have a lot of gore and guts in this one, along with some impressively garish deaths.  And while there is the inevitable hiccup of no one believing Nica when she tells them there’s a killer doll on the loose – she’s ‘crazy’ after all – some of the inmates do pick up on the signs and buy into it.  It’s just, you know, too late for them.

Some of the misdirection Cult plays around with feels a little unnecessary, backing us into a slightly illogical corner that threatens to remove the stakes of the story if Don continues on with it in another entry, but the film moves quick enough, and rolls along with enough payoffs, to have that be only a minor concern for now.  Plus, there are other wrinkles to worry about besides Chucky, as well as a good set of worthwhile characters for Nica to interact with.  While they ultimately amount to body count, they’re still a well designed, well written, well acted cast, making the world seem ‘real’ amidst the gleaming, sterile white halls of the hospital.

The movie edges a little toward being too self-referential at points, but that’s okay – you’ve earned it, almost 30 years on.

Joe LoDuca’s score is badass.  That is all.