WRITING (Tyler Burton Smith/Don Mancini): This movie really threw me back to classic horror movies with the terrible dialogue, but the well-written villain. Chucky is one of the best parts of the movie. He’s incredibly well-written and his dialogue is great, it feels natural. The rest of the dialogue, however, is mostly garbage. Every minor character is poorly-written and given no impact in the overall story for the most part. I knew that would be the case, though, with this movie. The part I was mostly looking forward was the scares. Every scare was looking to be fantastic, so much lead-up and so much tension and creativity, only for the punchline of the gag to be a jumpscare where Chucky just stabs his victim. It removes all built-up tension and creativity of the scene. The motivations of all of Chucky’s kills all made sense, it was entirely believable. 3/10
PERFORMANCES (Lars Klevberg): Mark Hamill as Chucky was the highlight of this whole movie. Most of the time I forgot it was him in the role. Aubrey Plaza was great and so was Brian Tyree Henry and Gabriel Bateman. The rest of the supporting cast, however, was trash. The guy who played Shane sucked and so did the rest of the kids. Budget Gibby from iCarly was the best of all of the kid minor characters. 5/10
CINEMATOGRAPHY (Brendan Uegama): The cinematography in this film was just average. There were some very nice-looking shots, but barely any of it really elevated the film at all. It was mostly just a lens for people to look through. 6/10
EDITING (Tom Elkins/Julia Wong): The editing was mostly fine. There’s nothing exceptional, most of the cuts are smooth and the color grading was great. There was one jarring moment where the film cuts to a close-up where the character exits the frame, then cuts back to the other shot. It made no sense to cut to that shot in the first place. 8/10
VISUAL EFFECTS (Ed Hawkins): The VFX for Chucky were amazing. He looked so lifelike and interacted with the environment incredibly well. The rest of the VFX were all excellent fusions of practical and CGI. 10/10
ENJOYMENT: I wanted to enjoy this movie a lot more. At the very least, I wanted the scares to be fun. And each scare started out great, but just ended in a jump scare. The movie itself was enjoyable, but not as fun as I wanted it to be. 4/10
MUSICAL SCORE (Bear McCreary): The music of this film is great, but doesn’t feel entirely original. It does more than just fill the silence, but it doesn’t elevate it as much as it could. 7/10
SOUND (Chris Baker): The sound was well-done and seamless. There was nothing that stood out in a bad way and everything was well-mixed. 10/10
PRODUCTION DESIGN (Dan Hermansen): The production design of the Zed Mart was great, it felt alive and vibrant, but a bit small. Every other set was alright, didn’t really stand out in any way. 7/10
OVERALL: ‘Child’s Play’ is a fun watch but fails in delivering on punchlines. It’s great in most technical departments, but needed more work in writing and the casting.
Marc Mifsud 