Franchises: Child's Play. Seed of Chucky (2004)

The ending of Bride of Chucky not only made it clear that there was going to be another Chucky movie (as did a featurette on the VHS and DVDs where Don Mancini himself made it very clear that there would be more), but also what it was going to focus on: Chucky and Tiffany's child. And since Bride of Chucky was quite a success at the box-office, there were signs that the public was eager and ready for another film... and then, years passed and no new movie came out. I would look on IMDB and see that the film, which I initially thought would be called Son of Chucky in keeping with the Universal Frankenstein motif since the last one was Bride, was in production but no word on when it would be released. It wasn't until right before the movie came out in November of 2004 that I even knew that it had been completed, my reaction being, "They finally made that movie?" I didn't actually see it until I got it on DVD the following summer but, even before then, I knew I was in for a film that, if nothing else, would be quite interesting judging from the ads I'd seen and what I'd read about it. From what little I had read on IMDB, the plot seemed really bizarre and confusing, something about Jennifer Tilly playing herself as well as returning as Tiffany and her and Chucky living in her house with their kid or something of that nature. In any case, my initial thoughts on the film? "Well, it's definitely crazier and sillier than the last one." That was literally what I told my mom when she asked me about it. As I watched it more and more, my feelings on it became more concrete: while it is enjoyable in a way, this is an absolute farce that, at the time, seemed to trounce any hope the series had of being taken seriously. Many may not have taken Chucky seriously before but I think this pretty much sealed the deal for the majority.



Years after the events of Bride of Chucky, Tiffany and Chucky's child is now the dummy of a cruel, English ventriloquist. The kid wonders what his parents were like and soon sees behind the scenes footage of Chucky Goes Psycho, a movie based on the urban legend about the killer dolls and Chucky and Tiffany have been reconfigured as animatronic dummies to be used in the film. Their child, determined to meet his parents, escapes from the ventriloquist and arrives in Hollywood and when he finds them, he uses the amulet from the corpse of Charles Lee Ray that Chucky and Tiffany recovered in the last movie to bring them back to life. Once revived, the two murderous dolls are shocked to find out that they're parents and immediately argue as to whether the child is a boy or a girl, unable to decide whether his name should be Glen or Glenda. After Chucky and Tiffany murder an effects technician and Jennifer Tilly discovers the body, the two pint-sized psychopaths escape along with Glen. They decide to transfer their souls into rapper-turned-director Redman and Tilly, who's trying to get a role in Redman's directorial debut. Tiffany also decides that she and Chucky need to stop killing people since they're parents now, to which Chucky "agrees" but has his fingers crossed behind his back when he does. Tiffany doesn't exactly hold up her end of the bargain either, though. At the same time, the two of them come up with a plan to use Tilly as a surrogate mother for more children and Glen, who's horrified at his parents' murderous tendencies, slowly begins to lose his sanity.

After creating the character of Chucky and writing all of the previous films, Don Mancini finally works his way into the director's chair while still writing the screenplay for this entry. Although, as Leonard Maltin pointed out, he should have handed himself a better script. Did you read that plot summary? Is that not one of the craziest, most convoluted things you've ever read in your life? Sure, Bride of Chucky may have been a funny movie but it managed to do so while still keeping the horror motif alive and well throughout; Seed of Chucky, on the other hand, goes for broke on the comedy and squelches out the horror aspect almost completely, with the end result being a mishmash of a film that can't decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a parody, a horror film, or just plain gross. Mancini has said that he intended for the film to be a parody on domestic dramas and tabloid television, as well as touching on his own confusion of identity when he was growing up gay and the conflict that it put him in with his own father. I can definitely see that and, after watching candid interviews with the guy, it seems like this is the type of stuff he likes to make and that it fits his personality and sense of humor, but that said, the movie is just so crazy that it's a little hard to appreciate those aspects, at least for me.

Because Mancini wanted to bring her back physically as well as the voice of Tiffany, Jennifer Tilly has an interesting job this time around as she's playing both herself and returning as the character she played in the previous movie. As herself, she plays an exaggerated parody of what people probably assume her to be: a loud-mouthed bitch who's horrible to everyone around her, only cares about getting her next big break, and will do whatever it takes to get it, including the old cliche of sleeping with the director. She also brings up how she has an Oscar nomination but that it does nothing to help her career, adding, "Now look at me, I'm fucking a puppet!" and she's determined to prove to people that she has the acting chops to play all sorts of roles, which is why she goes for the role of the Virgin Mary in Redman's movie. He, ultimately, has the same reaction as everyone else: her as the mother of Jesus? Yeah, sure. As over the top and obnoxious as Tilly is here (firing her assistant for a really selfish reason), it's good to know that she's willing to make fun of herself and, according to Mancini, will do anything asked of her except throw up on camera, which is interesting considering some of the other crap she's asked to do in this movie.

Tilly plays Tiffany a little bit differently in this film. In Bride of Chucky, Tiffany was a pretty trashy, psychotic woman who had a love/hate relationship with her intended lover, whereas here, while she's still insane, she's a bit sillier and, surprisingly, softer than before. Turns out she's a fan of Jennifer Tilly, saying her playing Tiffany in a movie is perfect casting (groans), and decides to possess her body. So, she started out as Jennifer Tilly and by the end of this movie, she's Jennifer Tilly again. Wrap your head around that. Also, I'm no authority, but judging from how she was previously, I kind of doubt she would decide to give up killing just because she's had a baby. It also goes against the decision she made at the end of the last movie that she and Chucky belong dead, something she actually battled Chucky to the death over. It's possible that her learning that she had a child changed her attitude but still. And that's another thing: she and Chucky sure do settle their differences quickly, seeing as how she betrayed him at the end of the previous movie and he killed her as a result. Wouldn't they wake up and attack each other right off the bat? Once again, she proves that she's not as evil as her beau and does genuinely care about her son (or daughter) and wants him to be happy, although she unintentionally drives him crazy due to her arguments with Chucky about his gender. I also can't help but be amused at her inability to control her murderous urges, to the point where she actually goes on an addiction hotline for help. That's priceless. Finally, she manages to succeed in getting a new body where her lover failed and even manages to get the life that she wanted. Not that it matters, though, as she's still insane and murderous as the ending shows.

This time, Brad Dourif plays Chucky purely for laughs. Gone is the sadistic, cold-blooded killer with a sense of humor. He still kills, of course, but personality-wise, he's mainly just a comedian now. His schtick is funny, though. I love his reaction when he sees Glen for the first time and, not knowing that he's his son, says, "It looks like the kid fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down." It also is amusing to see him cope with fatherhood, especially to a kid who has a severe identity crisis. While Tiffany is open to Glen being either a boy or girl, Chucky is determined for him to be a boy than he can do manly stuff with... as in killing. He pressures Glen to partake in murdering with him, despite the kid's unwillingness to do so, and he wants his kid to be a killer so much that he's proud even when it's himself who's getting butchered by Glen. I also love his defense of his being a murderer, that it's simply a way of life for him and he sees nothing wrong with it, suggesting that he's not insane as we all originally thought but that it's simply how he sees it. My biggest problem with Chucky in this film, though, is that at the end, when everything is going crazy around him, he decides not to transfer his soul into a human body and that he likes being a killer doll because of the infamy it's brought him. You mean that, after almost twenty years and five movies, Charles Lee Ray, who fought against being stuck as a doll forever, pursued three different proposed bodies (Andy, Tyler, and Jesse) and went through a lot of crap in each instance to do so, has decided at the last minute to remain a doll? And for what reason? Because everything around him is nuts, as he says? He reached this epiphany because of that? Now that Curse of Chucky exists, I no longer feel like this destroyed the motivation of the character and made it pointless to follow him in more movies because that film fixed it in a satisfactory enough way, but that decision that Chucky makes here still doesn't feel right to me. Dourif is still awesome but, by this point, it just doesn't feel like the same character anymore.

Billy Boyd has the most interesting role as Glen. He's a confused, lost little creature who doesn't know where he came from and when he discovers his parents' identities, he's horrified to discover that they're murderers. He fights against his own, inherit instinct to kill but the carnage both of his parents expose him to gradually ebbs away his sanity, which was already questionable seeing as how he has nightmares of stalking and killing people like his father. Another thing that eats away at him are his parents' arguments about whether he's male or female. The whole Glen or Glenda motif is an obvious nod to the Ed Wood movie and it becomes very literal when he develops a split-personality, putting on women's clothes and brutally murdering people. It's a question of identity with him and, as said earlier, Don Mancini loosely based the character on himself and the challenges and awkwardness he went through when he discovered he was gay. He also says that Glen's relationship with Chucky is a mirror of the relationship he had with his own father, who wasn't too eager to allow him to be gay, just as Chucky wants Glen to be a boy, whether the kid likes it or not. Overall, I thought Boyd did a good job of being confused and lost as to who he is and where he came from. He's the one who ultimately kills his father out of revenge for when he apparently kills Tiffany due to her leaving him because he's decide to remain a doll, something she doesn't want for herself. Like his mother, by the end of the film, he's managed to transfer his soul into a human boy, namely one of the two babies that Jennifer Tilly gave birth to after being impregnated by Chucky's seed. His murderous other self, Glenda, also got a body, namely the twin sister of the boy who Glen put his body into. (Confused yet?) Oh, and he wets himself when he gets nervous. I don't know what else I can say about that.

The other actors are nothing special. Redman plays a version of himself as a rapper turned director who's looking to make a movie about the Virgin Mary and there's really not much else to say about him other than he's a kind of sleazy person who knows Jennifer Tilly isn't the best choice for the part but is willing to give it to her (we assume) if she sleeps with him. Mancini originally wanted Quentin Tarantino to play that part as himself but, not surprisingly, he wasn't having it. Hannah Spearritt as Tilly's assistant Joan is nothing more than the typical abused employee of a selfish Hollywood star and ends up getting killed by Glenda for her trouble. John Waters plays a very scummy-lookin paparazzi who wants to dig up some dirt on Tilly and gets killed because he unknowingly got a picture of Chucky. Nothing else to say about him other than, like a lot of people in this movie, he's basically playing an exaggerated version of himself, and agreed to be in the movie because he's a big Chucky fan and wanted to be killed by him. Finally, there's Steve Lawton as Stan, Tilly's chauffeur who's in love with her but is ignored by her throughout the movieand only gets a chance to confess his feelings when he's kidnapped by the dolls along with Tilly... and he dies right after he does so. I also have to mention Nadia Dina Ariqat who briefly appears Britney Spears, mostly because the TV spots often played the scene where Chucky runs her off the road followed by a disclaimer that said, Britney Spears is NOT starring in this movie. I at first thought that meant she wasn't starring in the movie because she got killed but what they really meant by that is that it's not really her, which I did think it was. Let's be honest, the only reason they had that scene was because she was all over the tabloids at the time and a lot of people probably wanted her dead... and so Chucky could say, "Oops, I did it again," which makes me cringe because it's such a predictable and dated punchline.

The visual style to this film is kind of hard to explain. While you can tell that it had a decent-sized budget ($13 million), it's also clear that it's not as big-budgeted as Bride of Chucky and so, it's not as glossy and stylish in the way it looks. After thinking about what it reminded of for a long time, I think I've come to the conclusion that it makes me think of an early Tim Burton movie. It has that larger than life, hyper-reality feel to it, especially in regards to the color scheme of the sets and the lighting. Look at some shots from films like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands (particularly when it comes to the latter's depiction of the suburban neighborhood) and then compare them to Seed of Chucky, especially the epilogue after Chucky's death, and I think you'll see what I mean. Tonally, though, it feels like a John Waters movie, and I'm not saying that just because he's in it. It has that same, over-the-top, way out there crazy vibe and sense of humor that he brings to his movies, especially in the scenes regarding Chucky masturbating and Jennifer Tilly's insemination, as well as Glen's crossdressing whenever the Glenda personality takes over, his tendency to wet himself, and the sheer crassness of most of the characters, especially Tilly, and the movie at large. It's that type of movie where you just stop and think to yourself, "What am I watching?" and that's one of the reasons why this isn't one of my favorites. There are people who like those types of movies and are fans of Waters but I'm not, so a movie like it, even a Chucky movie, is not going to be to my tastes.

It's kind of redundant to talk about the doll animatronic effects by this point but, despite the overall quality of the movie, they're still top notch and the fact that they're still using them when they could just as easily do it all in CGI is commendable. But, while the animatronics are still very life-like and make them feel like real living creatures, I'm not too found of the way Chucky and Tiffany here. Even though the scarred look for Chucky isn't my favorite, I thought it was pulled off very well in the previous film; here... something about it feels off to me. Maybe it's the different style of lighting and photography or some actual tinkering they did to his look (it is a new effects guy here, so that could have something to do with it) but here, he doesn't come across quite as creepy-looking as he did previously. Instead, he just looks kind of cheap, for lack of a better word. As for Tiffany, she looks like they took her original design and put even more makeup and whatnot on her. In fact, she looks even more like a doll as a result (she kind of looks like she's made of porcelain), as well as not as pretty in my opinion. However, I was impressed by the design of Glen, who looks so odd and, as they described in the special features, haunted that it just adds to the sadness of this confused and troubled character. Like I mentioned Kevin Yagher handed the effects off to Tony Gardner, a veteran effects artist who's worked on a good number of movies since the 1980's and who also actually plays himself and is the first victim in the movie. Speaking of which, the deaths are as bloody and over the top as they were before: Gardner gets decapitated by a piano wire and his head flies up into the air as a result (Jennifer Tilly then finds it and messes with it a bit before realizing that it's not an effect), John Waters gets acid poured on his head (which results in a really bad CGI effect but the makeup effect for the aftermath looks nice and gross), Redman gets his intestines sliced out (though why the sizzle when they fall on the floor is anybody's guess), Joan gets set on fire, Stan gets a knife thrown into him, Tiffany gets an axe to the head, and, probably in an attempt to make up for his lame death at the end of Bride, Chucky has the goriest death of all, getting hacked to pieces by his son. So, other than the look of Chucky and Tiffany, there's little that I can complain about this movie effects-wise.

One thing I have to bring up, although I wish I didn't, is that there's way too much of an emphasis on Chucky's literal seed. Like I said before, I wondered why the movie wasn't called Son of Chucky and I found out why as soon as I watched the movie. The opening credits have a CGI sequence depicting sperm traveling through a body and, as if that wasn't enough, some gooey white stuff comes down and covers the screen as the title forms. Ugh! But the worst part of all is when Chucky actually masturbates into a cup so they can impregnate Jennifer Tilly with his sperm. In the theatrical version, which is what I had for a while, you just see him doing it in silhouette, followed by a closeup of his face as he climaxes. However, I now have the Blu-Ray box set with all of these films and the only version of the film there is the unrated edition, which has an added shot of Chucky's balls as he jerks his chain, because I always wanted to see that. And either way, that's still not the end of it because you actually see Tiffany squirting Chucky's semen into Jennifer Tilly and even a little bit of it dripping out of the baster! Again, I was happy to see that, of course. I can't get enough of Chucky jerking off and the end result. Excuse me while I now go take a shower for an hour and a half.



The music score is by Pino Donaggio, an Italian composer who's done the music for a number of horror movies like Don't Look Now, Carrie, and The Howling, and it's not bad. Granted, the only piece of it I can really remember is the main theme that first plays over the opening credits, which is the only aspect of this movie that's kind of creepy, but the rest of the score I do remember fitting the tone of the movie quite well. Unfortunately, there weren't any songs on the soundtrack that I liked this time around. I didn't like the version of One Way or Another by Full Blown Rose that plays over the first part of the ending credits and that Cut It Up song by Fredwreck Nassar about drives me insane.

At the end of the day, I have very mixed feelings about Seed of Chucky and, as such, it probably won't surprise you when I say that it's the Child's Play movie I've seen the least. Part of me is kind of entertained by the humor and craziness but the other part of me feels that it's a huge misfire. It's way too disgusting to be funny at times, the story is just nuts and makes it hard to appreciate whatever deeper meanings Mancini was trying to instill into it, the humor destroys what little horror there was left, and, ultimately, it's just not my taste when it comes to movies, both horror and comedy-wise. What's more, if the series hadn't become laughable enough to people after Bride of Chucky, this is the one that really sealed the deal. There may be a good number of pure fans who still don't appreciate Bride of Chucky but I'm sure even they would take it over this any day. If you're someone who's able to get into it and enjoy it, good for you, but it's just way too out there for me, and if you've read other reviews on here, you know that I like a fair amount of out there stuff. I guess you could say that Chucky's in that one scene sums up my feelings on this flick: "This is nuts, and I have a very high tolerance for nuts."