Filmmaker Kyra Elise Gardner’s examination of the Child’s Play franchise comes from a personal place in Living with Chucky, debuting on SCREAMBOX and Digital on April 4, 2023.
Kyra Elise Gardner is the daughter of Tony Gardner, one of the most prominent and integral special effects artists in the “Chucky” franchise. For the Gardners, Chucky is family.
And the Chucky films, well, they’re often about family as well.
The filmmaker’s familial relationship with the killer Good Guy doll, voiced by Brad Dourif, fittingly coincided with the horror icon unexpectedly finding himself a family in Bride of Chucky. Bride, penned by Don Mancini and directed by Ronny Yu, gave series protagonist Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) a much-needed rest and instead introduced franchise mainstay Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly), opening up new layers to Chucky in the process.
The very human but unhinged Tiffany revives Chucky through voodoo, hoping to rekindle their former relationship based on the discovery of what she perceived to be an engagement ring. Hell hath no fury like lovers scorned, though, and the fourth entry centers its slasher madness around the dysfunctional will they/won’t they couple. The whiplash between passionate lovers and lethal, bitter exes drives the raucously entertaining 1998 sequel, culminating in a moment of horror-comedy passion that ends with Chucky becoming a family man proper.
Naturally, Seed of Chucky picks up that thread of family, forcing Chucky to reckon with life as a new dad. Writer/Director Don Mancini dials up the camp for his humorous depiction of one of horror’s most dysfunctional families.
What happens when two volatile serial killers procreate while trapped in tiny plastic bodies? You end up with offspring deeply confused about their identity. The eponymous character, Glen (voiced by Billy Boyd), struggles with their mom and dad’s insatiable lust for blood. Glen feels an aversion to their penchant for violence, while Glen’s feminine identity, Glenda, shares their parent’s vicious streak. Those warring personalities make it all the trickier for dad Chucky to navigate when trying to mirror his child in his image.
The twisted dynamics at play would present enough meaty drama and conflict to play around with for many movies to come, and that’s what happened; Mancini’s “Chucky” TV series gives his killer doll another crack at fatherhood, to some extent. It also evolves the relationship between Tiffany, Chucky, and GG, who are now entirely comfortable and confident in their skin.
But in the space between Seed of Chucky and “Chucky,” Mancini figuratively splintered Chucky’s family tree again. In 2013’s Curse of Chucky, Don Mancini used a deceptive soft reboot setup with the introduction of Nica Pierce, played by Brad “Chucky” Dourif’s real-life daughter Fiona Dourif. There’s that all-in-the-family theme again. Nica is a paraplegic with a frail heart, living alone with her mother, Sarah (Chantal Quesnel). At the start of Curse, Sarah mysteriously dies, ruled as a suicide. The same day, a strange Good Guy doll arrives in the mail.
Cult of Chucky
Why Chucky showed up at this house to take out the Pierce family one by one doesn’t get revealed until the third act: Charles Lee Ray has a past with Nica’s mother, resulting in the death of Nica’s biological father and getting paralyzed in the womb. Charles Lee Ray holds Sarah responsible for his capture and enacts revenge in Curse of Chucky. The film’s events position Nica as one of the franchise’s most prominent protagonists and a frequent target of Chucky’s devious machinations – behind the scenes, it’s essentially a father vs. daughter tale.
And then there’s Curse of Chucky, which marks Nica Pierce’s indoctrination into the twisted family. Her family history with Charles Lee Ray makes her a metaphorical child of Chucky’s violence and provides her with a found family in allies like Andy Barclay and Kyle (Christine Elise). That grows even more complex in “Chucky,” where Nica finds herself a captive pawn and unwilling romantic suitor for Tiffany in the TV series.
It’s family that’s become a driving throughline connecting the Child’s Play franchise entries and providing complicated themes for its central characters. Don Mancini gave Chucky blood relatives to slay with, but the franchise’s explorations of found family resonate just as much… if not more.
It’s fitting that Living with Chucky reflects that through a personal journey with the franchise. In this franchise, after all, the family that slays together, stays together.
The post ‘Living with Chucky’ and the ‘Child’s Play’ Franchise’s Recurring Themes of Family appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.