The toy stories you don't wanna take the kids to.
In an era where pointless remakes designed to bulk up Hollywood financial coffers run rampant, it can be hard to remember that remakes themselves are not an inherently bad endeavor despite the most high profile one often coming out as pale imitations of their namesake.
More rare than the remake that somehow manages to stand strongly on its own 2 feet, however, is that odd duck result of a remake in which a potentially passable film is actively hindered by its studio mandated connectivity to its source material and the issues that can only rise out of the mindset of a product more obsessed with branding than personal identity.
It's at that crossroad that "Child's Play (2019)" lands; a film so obsessed with labeling itself as the hipper, modern, cooler child of its popular franchise it shafts the things that actually could have set it apart to be a worthwhile independent feature.
Gone is the iconic creepy East Side voice of Brad Dourif as voodoo adept serial killer Charles Lee Ray and in his place is an artificially intelligent doll assistant voiced by Mark Hamill.
This Chucky is a part of the Buddi doll line, which can synchronize to mobile applications in order to control a number of internet connected devices, which means trouble for 13 year old Andy Barclay, who finds himself the owner of a Buddi doll whose safety protocols have been disabled, opening a can of havoc to be wreaked upon his young life.
A child named Andy surrounded by a few other characters with matching names are just about the only thing that this film has in common with "Child's Play" and while that's not an inherently bad thing, the movie's attempt to bend over backwards to be "Child's Play" rather than carve out its own identity sits at the heart of all of its problems.
There's a scene early on in which Andy attempts to give Chucky his name, one that is not Chucky, ultimately for Chucky to railroad the name in via genuine misunderstanding due to his unstable programming that could basically serve as an allegory for the entire film.
"Child's Play (2019)" establishes a genuine bond between Andy and Chucky that's actually fairly compelling and tragic in its own right while satirically poking fun at the stupidity of technological development that feels the need to attach everything that can run on a battery onto a network and although the tonal whiplashing can get a little bit irritating as the movie chugs along, its genuine sense of humor while tackling a solid science fiction premise, buoyed by a terrific cast of actors that mostly show up to work actually make the first third or so of the movie a pleasant surprise.
Unfortunately, the killer doll iconography of the original film has to get pushed to the forefront because marketing.
Despite an admittedly impressive first time directorial effort on behalf of Lars Klevberg, what little charm the movie builds up is gradually dashed by a back majority that begins to become not only mundane but creatively bankrupt.
"Child's Play (2019)" tries and fails to maintain the original structure of its namesake despite assembling and developing story and themes that have nothing to do with that movie's effective points.
The rampaging mischievous displays that Chucky put forth in this movie make sense when your antagonist is a flamboyant human serial killer with a psychopathic sense of humor called the Lakeshore Strangler but when it's an AI that's supposed to be displaying an extreme one track binary thought process it's a bit more of a stretch and the technologically assisted kills, visceral as they may be, lack a certain sense of atmosphere and visual creativity implied by the premise of a killer doll.
That's to say nothing of maintaining a story structure that relies on the premise of a larger than life character to propel it forward, which Mark Hamill's Chucky does not do and was not designed to.
Its original ideas clash against the very premise, making the entire production come across as an overly long and overproduced episode of "Black Mirror," and that's before the gonzo third act of the movie where the humor becomes tiresome and the story embarrassingly attempts to frame the climax as some sort of watered down "Stranger Things-esque" adventure with a group of Andy's friends that had barely factored into the plot in any significant capacity up to that point.
On its own merits, "Child's Play (2019)" isn't a bad movie but its hindrance caused by its anchor to its own premise while current sequels to its original are displaying more energy and creativity go a long way towards dulling the unexpected shine it does have.
4 Friends to the End out of 10
Though the notion of turning the high profile con jobs of self-professed demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren into cinematic mythology capable of carrying unplanned spin-offs to a surprisingly good 6 year old supernatural horror movie has almost "Dark Universe" levels of cynicism attached to it that are becoming harder to ignore the further they try to stretch this premise while holding to the pretense of being "inspired" by a true story, I can' t deny that the "Conjuring Universe" is currently sitting at a net positive.
Barring "The Conjuring 2," which I hold to be one of the best horror movies of the decade, most of the films hover around the territory of decent, with the outright bad ones more or less being outliers even if they tend to generally be more average than great.
I'm almost tempted to say that as Kevin Feige has done to superhero movies in terms of nailing down a formula that's guaranteed to churn out a quality product, James Wan has made a contribution to the cinematic landscape that has at least slightly raised the bar on a genre that has become notorious for cheap thrills and low production values in favor of big front loaded studio paydays.
"Annabelle Come Home" finds itself planted firmly in the middle of the franchise, not quite on par with its surprisingly good immediate predecessor "Annabelle: Creation" but not as bad as the original film of the sub-series.
Serving as a more closely tied prequel to "The Conjuring," the film opens up with the Warrens receiving the cursed Annabelle doll and getting a peek at the danger that it brings before locking it away in their vault of cursed artifacts.
Entrusting their daughter to a neighbor babysitter for a night, the Warrens leave town on business before said neighbor's friend snoops around the infamous couple's home, unleashing Annabelle along with a slew of other artifacts and initiating a night of horrors that the three girls must ban together in order to weather.
"Anabelle Comes Home" continues the sub-series' tradition of keeping the story off of the Warrens despite their appearance framing the beginning and ending of the film and in the process, sort of comes across as a store brand "Conjuring."
All of the tricks of the trade for the franchise are here, from brilliant camera work and lighting to Oscar worthy sound design, testing characters that are undeniably 3 dimensional thanks to solid performances.
Like store brand items however, while sufficing for a diverting hour and a half long ride, you can't help but feel that something is missing. In "Annabelle Comes Home's" case, that missing link is genuine storytelling.
First time director Gary Dauberman has clearly picked up well on James Wan's tricks, working with him to construct this universe on the screenwriting side of things, and he does a great job directing individual scenes and set-pieces that unfortunately don't quite flow well together where narrative is concerned.
While there's enough charm in the bonding scenes of two kindly teenage girls giving a socially awkward and ostracized Judy Warren a fun birthday night of new friendships to effectively distract from how disconnected most of them seem to be from one another, all the creativity in the world can't hide the lack of polish put into transitioning from one set piece to another, some of which are so chock full of murky rules and questionable pacing I was legitimately beginning to wonder if any of them really were in danger from the supernatural threats that repeatedly disappear after loudly announcing their presence.
None of this to say that the film is bad but it's more than a bit distracting to notice that it almost feels beat for beat like a James Wan movie, except that if Wan had directed it, it would have been more intense, more stylish, more poignant, and probably even had better developed characters.
For a first time directorial effort however, "Annabelle Comes Home" definitely gets an A for effort and if it can push the genre further in this polished, plot driven, character centric direction that actually asks for storytelling standards, it has my wholehearted endorsement.
6 Con Artist Exorcisms out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment