What Every Child Needs
When pursuing a perpetrator, every cop worth his salt knows you gotta stop the bastard from transferring his soul into a nearby doll. Chris Sarandon makes a rookie mistake and fails to stop Brad Dourif from doing this in 1988's Child's Play. This movie is a lot more fun than I was expecting and its effects work holds up really well, looking even better than recent entries in the evil doll genre, such as M3GAN.
The campy humour is top notch, too. I love when Catherine Hicks comes home to find her best friend's been killed and all she wants to do is get the cops out of her hair so she can have a moment's peace.
Every emotional reaction just feels slightly off. Chris Sarandon, as the lead investigator, is ruffled and frustrated with the woman hampering his investigation. None of the cops have a drop of sympathy for the fact that her best friend was just thrown out of a sixth storey window and Hicks' character doesn't seem to need any.
Her little boy, Andy (Alex Vincent), gets Chucky for a birthday present. Before long, Chucky's asking Andy to take him to slums so he can murder a former accomplice. But everyone's resistance to the evidence that something strange is going on is turned on its head when Hicks, now a believer, doesn't understand why the cops won't believe that her son's doll is a serial killer.
The animatronics work on that doll is really good. The transitions between puppets and small actors in suits are pretty seamless, too. I especially liked the burnt and melted Chucky face at the end.
Child's Play is available on Cinemax and Max, which is a separate service belonging to HBO.