Take away the cellphones and SyFy's Chucky could easily pass as a 1988 production.
Don Mancini's Chucky is a TV adaptation of the Child's Play franchise and you'd expect that since it's a tv show, there's more opportunity to add depth and dimension to the characters. You'd be wrong. Every character is surprisingly one-dimensional and archaic in a way that you wouldn't expect from 21st-century entertainment.
⚠️ Spoilers ahead
The show follows middle-schooler Jake (Zachary Arthur) as he buys a vintage Good Guy doll for $20. Now Jake isn't buying the doll to cuddle or something, that would be weird for a 14-year-old. He is however buying it so he can decapitate it and use it for his somewhat disturbing sculpture made of doll parts. His father doesn't approve of his 'hobby' for the reason that art doesn't pay the bills, his art is creepy - and also the fact that he's gay so everything he does just seems gay.
The manner in which the show treats its leading gay character is almost jarring for a 2021 series. Everyone is either downright homophobic to Jake, making jokes at his expense or just completely ignoring his existence. Perhaps, other productions have been serving us idealistic dreamy kumbaya bullshit served on a paper plate where but is it really possible that there wasn't one single person around Jake who thought it was okay for him to be gay?
Jake's father is also violent towards him - physically 'roughing him up' and then destroying his sculpture in a fit of rage. Everyone knows that Jake's father is violent but no one ever does anything or offers any type of comfort not unless you count the other gay character Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson) who tonelessly says "I just wish I could protect you" while also creepily recording their conversation for a reason we never get to discover. Then there is also Devon's mother, Hackensack's hotshot Detective Evans (Rachelle Casseus) - who acknowledges that Jake's father was abusive but only because she was trying to get a teenager to confess to murder.
In this version of the world, it's okay for a middle schooler to smoke weed during the day and casually admit it to her educators, it's okay to repeatedly bully a kid for no reason at all, but a little gayness has their head spinning.
13-year-old popular mean girl (Alyvia Alyn Lind) - Lexy and her hotshot athlete boyfriend, Junior (also Jake's cousin) are probably the most problematic characters in the story. Unlike every other mean girl we've been introduced to, there's absolutely no depth to Lexy. She doesn't volunteer at an animal shelter in her spare time or read to the elderly - hell she barely even likes her own little sister, she's just plain mean and vile - oh and she cheats on her boyfriend too. Said boyfriend, Junior, mildly grumbles about her mean blood without actually doing anything about it - not even when she poor-shames his cousin by setting up a Gofundme or makes fun of his father's death.
She's also kind of mean and dismissive towards him that it makes you wonder why she doesn't just date someone she can bear to be around.
While attempting to get jiggy with her boyfriend at a party, Lexy gets frustrated that her boyfriend doesn't come downloaded with the 'how to please a girl' manual. When he asks her what to do, she responds in a frustrated voice "you're supposed to know what to do". In the age of self-love Tiktoks, 'you're-responsible-for-your-own-pleasure and all the responsibility preach, Lexy's outburst is far behind on current times and more likely to be uttered by a 90s character.
Back to the murder - Seeing Lexy so viciously mock his father's death is what makes Jake follow the voice of Chucky and say yeah maybe Lexy does deserve to die. And this 14-year-old proceeds to stalk who he thought was Lexy and attempt to stab her in the open. He really was gonna go through with it.
We cannot tell if Jake has always had murderous tendencies but if we were going by Zachary's interpretation of the character by constantly wearing expressions that are a cross between intense pain and disgust, we'd say there's definitely something amiss with this teenager.
Quickly catching up that Jake would never be the murderer Chucky wants him to be, the latter moves on to his cousin who is very unsurprised to encounter a talking doll, and Junior so easily takes up to murdering. Going from being a loyal son who wants his father's approval to bludgeoning said father to death with a Good Guy doll. That level of violence is acceptable when you suspect your father of cheating on your dead mother, right?
Where there was any character development, it happened so swiftly that the actors probably broke their necks switching attitudes. Lexy goes from being vicious to Jake to calling him her 'family', there's no mini redemption arc, no heartfelt apology, just a good ol' 180.
At the eleventh hour, SyFy & USA Network's Chucky does attempt to answer a few burning questions viewers might have - like did Lexy ever really love Junior, how is a doll strong enough to move 150-pound man, why does Chucky need teenagers to kill so bad? The problem is the show literally answers these questions not by showing us but by getting one character to listlessly ask while the other answers or in the case of Chucky and his eerie strength, he asked and then answered.
If you've always been a fan of the murderous voodoo-proficient doll, then you're going to love how the show stays true to its core storyline, the reappearance of old characters, the ever foul-mouthed doll, and the incessant stabbing and murdering.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a show with dependable plot, quality dialogue, and character development, it must suck to be you right now.
5/10
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