Franchises: Child's Play. Child's Play 2 (1990)

On that night before Halloween in 1999 when I first watched the original Child's Play, the USA Network inexplicably skipped the second movie and instead went straight into the third. However, I did see a little bit of Child's Play 2 the following night, on TNT, specifically the scenes where Chucky kills Mattson by suffocating him with a plastic bag, Andy at the school, and a little of his confrontation with Chucky down in the basement (a year or so before, when I was on vacation in Florida with my parents, I also saw some brief clips of it here and there on TV, but quickly turned the channel; and I also always remembered that artwork on the VHS box at Harold's). I would've watched it to the end, but because my mother, by that point, had enough of me watching slasher movies for one weekend, and also because I did have homework for the next day, I wisely turned it off. Thus, I wouldn't see the entire film for a couple of more years, when I bought both it and the original on VHS when I was fourteen. When I finally did, I found it enjoyable enough, but also thought it was a step down from the first one and, to this day, it's not one of my absolute favorites. It's not a bad movie whatsoever, though, and like the first, benefits greatly from good actors giving capable performances, very taut direction, more great animatronic effects for Chucky, whose character is further developed, more elaborate kills, and setpieces that are, in a way, bigger and better than the first, but I still can't help but prefer the first. While that could be because Karen Barclay and Mike Norris aren't here (and never would be again), or that this film's tone isn't as dark as the original, the main reason is because this one has always felt... rushed to me. I know that isn't the case, as there was a two year gap in-between it and the first film, which was the result of some unforeseen issues with the franchise's original home (indeed, if any Chucky movie was rushed, it was Child's Play 3), but the story and some of the characters don't feel as fully realized as they could've been (at least in the theatrical version, which I'll get into), and there are more contrived elements within the story.

Play Pals, the company behind the Good Guy doll toy line, has been hit with a slew of bad publicity due to Andy and Karen Barclay's story about Chucky and the murders he committed. In order to dispel rumors that a company employee tampered with the doll in some manner, they get a hold of Chucky's burned remains and rebuild him. But just as the technicians are putting the finishing touches on him, the machine that plants the plastic eyeballs into the doll's head malfunctions, causing a massive power surge that kills one of them. Meanwhile, the now eight-year old Andy has been staying at a foster center, as his mother has been institutionalized for backing up her son's story in court. Still having occasional nightmares about Chucky, he's taken in by Phil and Joanne Simpson, who live in the suburbs near Chicago. While getting settled in, and having to deal with Phil not exactly being the most loving foster father, he also meets Kyle, a cynical teenage girl who's also staying with them. Back in town, the Play Pals' CEO, Mr. Sullivan, orders his assistant, Mattson, to cover up the technician's death by any means necessary. Sullivan also tells him to do whatever he wants with Chucky, and that night, he puts the doll in his car to dispose of later, as he plans to have a romantic rendezvous. However, while Mattson is in a liquor store, the revived Chucky uses his files on Andy to track him down, and then forces Mattson to drive him to the location before murdering him. He then slips into the Simpsons' house and takes the place of Tommy, another Good Guy doll that's already there. Not wanting to be sent back to the foster center, Andy tries to convince Phil and Joanne of his stability by carrying around and playing with "Tommy," unknowingly giving Chucky the chance to get close to him. Upon learning that his tormentor has returned, Andy must once again fight to save his very soul and convince everyone around him of what's happening. At the same time, Chucky realizes his doll body is turning human again and he'll be trapped in it if he doesn't soon transfer his soul into Andy.

When I really got into the franchise, I found it interesting how the first film was distributed and owned by MGM, but all of the sequels were Universal. I often wondered why MGM gave up the rights to the franchise immediately after the first film, especially since it was very successful, both critically and commercially, and given how, on the special features, David Kirschner talks about how Tony Thomopoulis, the head of MGM/UA at the time, was very enthusiastic and insistent that they would be the best home for it. Well, as it turns out, the studio was basically screwed out of a lucrative franchise. Just as development began on Child's Play 2, it seemed as though United Artists was going to be bought out by an Australian company called Qintex, whose chairman, Christopher Skase, had decided that the studio would not be producing violent horror films. Thus, the sequel was canned and Kirschner, after being sold the production rights, went looking for another distributor, which eventually turned out to be Universal (Steven Spielberg is the one who contacted Kirschner with studio chief Sid Sheinberg's offer for the property). Ironically, UA's merger with Qintex never went through, as the deal was terminated when the company failed to produce a $50 million letter of credit, and then went bankrupt, with Skase fleeing Australia to avoid paying $700 million in personal debts.

After he and John Lafia had felt alienated by Tom Holland during production of the first film, Child's Play 2 afforded Don Mancini the opportunity to reconnect with the series he'd had a major part in creating. Even though both he and Lafia had no choice but to go with the voodoo mythology that Holland had created in writing the screenplay for the sequel, they found a way to make it work in a manner that was satisfying to them, and were also able to go back to their earlier drafts for the first film for material, something Mancini would continue doing as the series went on. The two of them even contributed to the film's marketing, including the trailer, which had Chucky stomping on a jack-in-the-box just as it was about to pop out and commenting, "Sorry, Jack. Chucky's back!"; according to Mancini, Lafia came up with the jack-in-the-box, while he himself came up with the foot stomp and the tagline. And while they felt like they were barred from the set on the first film, here not only was Lafia now in the director's chair but Mancini was able to be on the set throughout filming and aid his director in numerous ways, something he relished. Plus, with Kirschner not as involved since he had a lot on his plate at the time, the two of them were more or less the ones in charge.

According to Tom Holland in his interview for Reign of Chucky, he was offered to direct Child's Play 2, despite all of the conflicts he had with Kirschner and the others, but turned it down, mainly because that was when the film was still at United Artists and he didn't want to deal with that studio's personnel again. So, Kirschner hired John Lafia, who'd been passed over for director on the first film due to his lack of experience. By this point, though, he'd directed a couple of episodes of Freddy's Nightmares and Monsters, as well as a feature called The Blue Iguana, and jumped at the chance. By all accounts, he was incredibly meticulous in his planning for the film and a complete perfectionist in the actual shooting, sometimes to a fault, at one point taking a whole day to get one shot of the Chucky animatronic absolutely right. However, everybody who worked with him seemed to have really liked him (except for Ed Gale, who claimed that Lafia picked on him and was also mad that he wasn't used nearly as much as before) and talked about how he drew on so many different movies and filmmakers for inspiration. He followed up Child's Play 2 with the 1993 killer dog flick, Man's Best Friend, which is pretty decent and a movie I have some nostalgia for, but not a classic by a long shot. That was really his last theatrical film, as he went on to direct the live-action footage for games like Corpse Killer, and more television, notably episodes for shows like Babylon 5 and The Dead Zone. Having been involved with music before he got into filmmaking, Lafia went back to that in the late 2000's, but sadly, he committed suicide in 2020, at the age of 63.

Alex Vincent returns as Andy Barclay and, now being eight years old and a little more experienced, his acting, which was already pretty good in the first film, is even better. I've always felt that they followed up on Andy's character in a very natural way, with the events of the first film having left him quite scarred, as you would expect. In stark contrast to the innocent, wide-eyed child we saw before, when we first see him at the foster center, he now has a feeling of haunted paranoia and emotional emptiness about him. Not only does he still have nightmares about Chucky, but he now feels completely isolated and alone, having been separated from his mother, one of three people who know the truth, and is surrounded by well-meaning adults who will simply not believe him until it's too late. When he's adopted by Joanne and Phil Simpson, he's initially very awkward and unsure of how to feel about them, especially in how intolerant and grouchy Phil comes off, as well as how strange their house is. On top of that, he meets Kyle, who has a pretty standoffish attitude towards him and just about everyone else, at first, and when Joanne is showing him his room, he gets scared out of his wits when he finds a Good Guy doll in the closet. That PTSD and paranoia rears its head again that night, when Andy hears something downstairs but Joanne reassures him that he's perfectly safe (unbeknownst to him, that couldn't be farther from the truth). After both he and Kyle are grounded when Joanne's family heirloom gets smashed, Andy overhears Phil talking about possibly sending him back, saying he may be too troubled for them to handle. Hearing Joanne then say that she likes him, Andy, wanting a stable environment to call home, tries to face his fears by carrying around the "Tommy" doll. At the same time, he starts to bond with Kyle, as the two of them can relate to being orphaned, despite the vastly different circumstances, but no sooner is he getting settled than he realizes his worst fear has come true, when Chucky drops the act and attempts to possess him. Now, Andy finds himself in a similar situation to the first time around, trying to warn Joanne, Phil, and Kyle, only for them not to believe him.

As if Andy didn't have enough to worry about, he also has to go to school and deal with bullying kids and an overbearing, unsympathetic teacher. And then, Chucky gets him put into detention in an attempt to get him alone, but Andy manages to escape back to the house. Now, with Phil on the brink of sending him away, and knowing that he'll never be safe as long as Chucky is alive, Andy decides to take matters into his own hands. That night, he grabs an electric carving knife and heads down into the basement where

Chucky is in order to face him. While it doesn't work and leads to him getting framed for Chucky's evil deeds once again when he kills Phil, it's great that he didn't just stupidly wait around for Chucky to attack. Before he's taken back to the foster center, Andy warns Kyle about Chucky still being in the cellar, and when we next see him at the center, after he's tucked into bed, he immediately gets out and changes out of his pajamas, preparing for the inevitable. Sure enough, Kyle shows up there with Chucky, who's

holding her hostage, and Andy is taken prisoner and separated from the adults, culminating in the three of them winding up at the Play Pals factory. Following Chucky's failure to transfer his soul into him, Andy and Kyle are chased throughout the factory, with Chucky now, trapped in the doll, just wanting to kill them both. Though Andy does kind of get side-lined here in a manner similar to the first film's climax, he does eventually get a good one up on Chucky, burying him in hot melted plastic, although Kyle is

the one who ultimately finishes him off. But even then, like the original, this ending is very bittersweet, as Andy and Kyle just walk out of the factory and into the sunrise, with no home to go. And the sad thing is that Andy's story only becomes more tragic as the series goes on.

Kyle (Christine Elise) starts out as a rebellious, cynical, self-reliant young woman who doesn't give much of a crap about Andy or her foster parents, as she's been in and out of foster homes since she was very young and sees this as just another temporary home. Like any rebellious teen, she not only sneaks out of the house but also smokes, having another pack on hand when Joanne confiscates the one she's currently smoking. Though she initially sees Andy as little more than an annoyance, and is particularly irked when they get grounded for Joanne's statue getting broken, something Kyle is sure he did, the two of them do slowly become close because of their similar situations. She even gives him some pointers about not drawing attention as a new kid at school and, later on, when he becomes depressed about possibly being sent away, she tells him, "Andy, I've lived with dozens of different families. And they always seem to send me away just when I'm getting comfortable. But you know what?... Every time it happens, it just makes me stronger. Because it reminds me that the only one I can count on is myself. Okay, and you have to learn that now. I know it sounds tough. But you'll deal with it." 

Like everyone else, Kyle initially doesn't believe Andy about Chucky and even kind of teases him about it at one point. While Joanne immediately blames him for Phil's death, Kyle clearly doesn't know what to think. She does try to be sympathetic towards Joanne, telling her that what happened isn't her fault and takes Andy's suitcase down to him so she doesn't have to, and is also civil enough to him when she brings his case, but doesn't take his warning about Chucky still being down in the cellar seriously.

She is, however, sick enough of the doll to throw him in the garbage can in the backyard after the police leave. And shortly afterward, she learns the truth when she accidentally unearths the Tommy doll and sees that Chucky is no longer in the garbage. He promptly kills Joanne and takes Kyle hostage, forcing her to drive him to the adoption center to find Andy. But Kyle proves to be another formidable foe, managing to send Chucky flying out of the car and then trying to run him down. And like Mike Norris in the original, from then on out, Kyle is determined to

rescue Andy and help him defeat Chucky, ultimately being the one who kills him. Fortunately, unlike Mike, while Kyle did disappear from the franchise for a long time after this film, she would eventually return.

One last thing to note about Kyle is how, as the movie goes on and she softens up as she grows closer to Andy, her look follows suit. When we first meet her, she's wearing a dark blouse and blue jeans, red lipstick, a black, leather biker cap (which actually belonged to Christine Elise), and a long, punkish necklace around her neck. The econd time, she's wearing a green sweater, cutoff jeans, and a big red hair-bow, and like before, has a cigarette, either in her hand or mouth. She continues dressing in this 

punk-like style when she sneaks in that night to find Andy tied up in his bed, complete with dark sunglasses and a necklace with a key the next day. However, her appearance softens considerably when she consoles Andy about possibly being sent away that night, and during the climax, she's wearing much more feminine clothing and her hairstyle doesn't make her feel as standoffish as it did in some of the previous scenes.

Interestingly, I saw An American Werewolf in London for the first time not too long after I got this film on video, so I was already familiar with Jenny Agutter. She portrays Andy's foster mother, Joanne Simpson, as very sympathetic towards Andy's plight and wanting to help him get back to a normal life. Although her husband doesn't like the idea of having a potentially disturbed child in their house, and despite the evidence suggesting that Andy is, indeed, quite troubled, she defends him, telling Phil that she likes him. And even when strange things continue to happen that Andy, for all intents and purposes, appears to be behind, Joanne continues to stick up for him, thinking that they need to come together as a family in order to help him. However, besides genuine affection towards the kid, it also seems like Joanne is trying to compensate because she and Phil are unable to have children of their own. While it's never said aloud, it is suggested by how Joanne dodges Andy's question about who she's going to give her family heirloom to, as well as a subtle exchange of looks between her and Phil, and by the notion that they've fostered a good number of children over the years (a scene in the TV version adds more substance to this, which I'll get into later). Also, Joanne seems so desperate to have a family that she's a bit insensitive towards Kyle's own situation. She ignores the fact that Kyle works all the time to save up the money she'll need when she ages out of the system the following year by commenting, "Yes, well, until then, you're with us, okay?", and insisting that she have dinner with them that night. Still, there was obvious potential in this home, and it's a real shame that Chucky spoils everything, turning Joanne completely against Andy by murdering Phil when he's down in the basement with him. Devastated by this, she yells at Andy to get away from her when he tries to comfort her, and later laments to Kyle that Phil wouldn't have died if she'd listened to him. Chucky kills Joanne herself not long after this and, after everything she tried to do for Andy, it's really sad to think that she likely died hating him.

Phil Simpson (Gerrit Graham), Andy's foster father is, unlike his wife, uneasy at best about fostering a boy who seems to be so troubled. However, while many reviews of the movie paint him as a completely intolerant asshole, and he certainly has his douchey moments, like not understanding why Andy is so freaked out by the Good Guy doll he finds in his closet, grounding both Andy and Kyle over Joanne's statue being broken, and not just throwing "Tommy" out instead of tossing him down into the basement, a closer look does show that he's not all bad. When they're first driving Andy home, Phil tries to make nice with Andy, telling him that Joanne's a great cook, and his reprimanding Andy when he first reaches for the statue is strict but gentle enough. He also genuinely cares about his wife, even though his opinion on Andy soon has them at odds, and when it seems like Kyle tied Andy up to keep him from telling Joanne and Phil that she sneaked out of the house while she was grounded, he angrily comes to the boy's defense over it. And while he does come off as intolerant, he does make a good point about how they may be in over their heads when it comes to fostering a boy as seemingly unbalanced as Andy, as well as, when Joanne argues that sending Andy back to the foster center would be traumatic, he counters, "Traumatic for who, Joanne?! For him, or for you?!" That said, though, the way he ends that argument, by loudly yelling that Andy is going to tear their family apart and, "He's not our child!", is really dickish. Still, when he goes down into basement upon hearing Andy and Chucky's struggle, and sees Andy holding the carving knife, he handles it really well, managing to stay calm and convince Andy to turn the knife off. Notably, he sees Chucky right before he dies, so he at least goes out knowing that Andy was telling the truth, whereas it's left ambiguous if Joanne saw him before he killed her. 

Among the supporting cast, the one character you just love to hate is Miss Kettlewell (Beth Grant), Andy's teacher. She's only in the film for a few minutes, but proves to be a first-rate bitch, refusing to listen to Andy when he yells at a kid who's bugging him in class, sneering, "I have precious little patience for disruptive students... Especially new students whose utmost concern should be getting on my good side." Then, when she thinks he wrote "FUCK YOU BITCH" on his homework, she not only makes him get back in his seat, constantly yelling, "Head, down!", even when he can't put his head down much lower on his desk, but actually locks him in the classroom while she goes to telephone Joanne. The only good thing she does, albeit unintentionally, is that she locks Chucky in a closet, keeping him from getting at Andy and allowing him time to escape. And like most unlikable characters in horror movies, Miss Kettlewell is killed off almost immediately, and for a reason that she's just as stupid as she is mean.

Grace Poole (Grace Zabriskie), the head of the adoption center, is someone I kind of like since she's always sympathetic towards Andy, really vouching for him when she meets with Joanne and Phil, and even when he's sent back to her after Phil's death, she clearly doesn't believe that he killed him. Unfortunately, like Phil, she finds out that Chucky is alive right before he brutally kills her. On the flip side, Mr. Sullivan (Peter Haskell), the president of Play Pals, is a scowling asshole who, when he meets

with his assistant, Mattson (Greg Germann), at the beginning of the movie, wants to hear nothing but good news concerning the situation his company is in due to Andy's story. He also sees the bizarre, lethal death of the technician after Chucky is rebuilt as nothing more than an inconvenience, and tells Mattson to keep what happened from getting to the press, "Or you're here outta here in 24 hours." And when Mattson asks him what he should do with Chucky before he leaves, Sullivan sneers, "Stick it up your ass." Though he manages to escape falling prey

to Chucky (at least, for now), Mattson isn't so lucky. For whatever reason, he takes the doll with him when he leaves work that night and ends up being taken hostage, forced to drive Chucky to the suburban neighborhood where Andy is now living with his foster parents (I've never been able to tell if he actually sees Chucky during this sequence or if he thinks he's a carjacker, as he acts rather calmly about a doll putting a gun in his face). While it turns out that the gun Chucky had on him was a water pistol, he promptly suffocates him with a plastic bag over his head.

If the first film served as Chucky's introduction, then this is where his personality truly began to develop. There were touches of humor here and there before, and Chucky did have moments of enjoying what he was doing, like when he was laughing evilly while toying with Mike Norris and doing the same when killing Dr. Ardmore, but he was mainly motivated by revenge and the desire to escape the doll before the change became permanent. In this film, while he still has the same ultimate goal, there are many more instances of that sadistic glee, with his laugh becoming much more of that Joker-like cackle it's now remembered as, and we also see how much he loves to kill, as he goes out of his way to murder people he has no reason to, like Miss Kettlewell, Phil and Joanne, and the technician at the Play Pals factory. He's more of a wise-cracker as well, with Brad Dourif getting to drop a good number of more blatant one-liners, like, "Hug this!", "You've been very naughty, Miss Kettlewell," "How's it hanging, Phil?", "You goddamn woman drivers!", "Playtime's over," "Snap out of it! You act like you never seen a dead body before!", and, "I hate kids," among others. There are also moments like when, after taking the Tommy Good Guy doll's place, Chucky, while impersonating him, says, "Hi, I'm..." then briefly looks to the side before saying, "Tommy, and I'm your friend to the end,"; when he and Kyle get pulled over by a cop and he's so impatient to get to Andy that he doesn't even bother doing the doll voice when the cop talks to him; and him exasperatedly giving Kyle the finger (following this, he would flip off at least one person in just about every movie). Speaking of the latter, what makes me laugh harder is the moment that motivated him to do that, which is Kyle thwarting him just as he about to do the chant over Andy, to which he yells an utterly irritated, "Goddammit!" 

However, the humor is not as overbearing as it would become in some of the later films. Like with Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, this and the next film manage to strike a nice balance between the jokes and keeping Chucky still relatively menacing, which is definitely the case here. Besides the still unsettling idea that he's trying to possess a young boy's body, there are moments where Chucky takes obvious pleasure in tormenting Andy, such as when he first reveals himself to him.

Andy wakes up to find himself tied to the bed, with a sock stuffed in his mouth as a gag (though he could easily spit it out), and Chucky looming over him, as he evilly tells him, "Surprise. Did you miss me, Andy? I sure missed you. I told ya, we were gonna be friends to the end. And now, it's time to play. I've got a new game, sport. It's called Hide the Soul, and guess what? You're it." He then puts his hand on his forehead and begins the chant, only to get interrupted when Kyle sneaks in through the window. Irked,

Chucky drops the affable facade and tells Andy, "This isn't over, you little shit. I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life as a plastic freak. Next time you're alone, you're mine!", before acting like a normal doll again. He does that several times throughout the movie, like when Miss Kettlewell locks him in the closet and, while Andy is trying to escape the classroom, he initially acts all innocent, asking Andy to let him out, before losing his temper and yelling, "Now open the goddamn door! Let me out, you little dick! LET ME THE FUCK OUT!" But what's especially disturbing

is how Chucky, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, sews seeds of distrust and dissension around Andy. When he's not causing the kid to look crazy, making Joanne and Phil argue about sending him away, he's compounding Miss Kettlewell's already bad, and admittedly bitchy, first impression of Andy by defaming his homework. And then, there's how he makes Joanne turn on Andy completely by murdering Phil and making it seem as though Andy may have been behind it.

Chucky's fury and rage still manage to be quite frightening whenever he rabidly attacks someone, be it when he ambushes Andy down in the basement or attacks Kyle after she finds Joanne's body, ferociously yelling, biting, and kicking both of them, just as he did Karen in the first movie. But it's during the climax in the Play Pals factory, where Chucky's attempt to possess Andy fails and he learns he's been in the doll for too long and is now stuck within it (at least, until the next movie), that he's completely unleashed. Upon

realizing it when the thunderclouds dissipate and blood drips from his nose, Chucky roars at Andy, "You little shit, do you know what you've done?! It's too late! I've spent too much time in this body! I'm fucking trapped in here!" Then, to add insult to injury, Kyle pushes some Good Guy doll boxes on top of him, allowing Andy to get away. Chucky then explodes out from under them, screaming in rage, and from then on, he's dead-set on killing both Kyle and especially Andy. Dourif really goes all out in his voice-acting here, screaming at the top of his lungs as

Chucky, while chasing Andy up a slide on a conveyor belt, yells, "You can't get away from me! I'm gonna kill you, Andy!", "I'm gonna get you, fuckers!" when they manage to temporarily slow him down; and at the end, when he corners Andy, despite having had his legs ripped off, "I got you now, Andy! And you what I'm gonna do to you? I'm gonna cut off your legs, too!" He's so out for blood that he's willing to even maim himself if necessary, like when Kyle drops a grate on his right hand and he pulls it off while screaming in agony, and painfully jams a knife-blade into it to give himself a new weapon. And as is the case in this first handful of movies, he takes an awful lot of punishment before he finally goes down.

The way Chucky looks in both this movie and the next are my two personal favorite designs, which they wouldn't come close to again until the Chucky TV series. He often looks really mean and demented here in particular, and while they may have forever abandoned the idea of the doll body slowly becoming human over the course of the film (he still bleeds and the like as he starts to turn human again), I'm sure they still used several different faces and heads for him, as he tends to look quite different from one

scene to another. Sometimes, his facial features, like his cheekbones and brows, are more streamlined and typically doll-like, and his eyes look more toy-like, while other times, they're much more pronounced and make him look like something that seems alive. There are also certain expressions that he only has in maybe one or two scenes, in particular that really demented one at the school, which you see when he's defacing Andy's homework and when he goes in for the kill on Miss Kettlewell. Or it could be that this animatronic really was capable of all these different types of

expressions and could fool me into thinking it wasn't just one head. Also, like the first film, you see Chucky in various stages of destruction, from when his hand gets ripped off and jams it onto a knife-blade, to his getting his legs ripped off and having to use a small cart to get around, and finally, when he's covered in molten plastic before his head explodes.

On a technical level, Child's Play 2 is a very well-made film, with its larger budget of $13 million being quite apparent. Both John Lafia and his cinematographer, Stefan Czapsky (who went on to shoot several of Tim Burton's films), establish a very different visual aesthetic from the first film. Unlike the original's muted, dreary wintertime look and feel, this film seems to take place in the springtime (although it was shot in the fall of 1989), and has a brighter and much more colorful look, with a number of the sets and environments having a lot more to

their design and paint schemes than you would think. The drawback, though, is that it doesn't feel as creepy, and while some of the nighttime scenes, both interior and exterior, are shot well, others are a tad too bright for their own good. Fittingly, though, since it's a Universal film, the first scenes of Chucky in action take place on a dark and stormy night, with lots of flashing lightning setting a nice mood for his evil deeds. Lafia's enthusiasm for the project, as well as his meticulous preparation and direction, result in a lot of camerawork and shots that are far above

average for a money about a killer doll. The movie even opens up with one, starting on a very tight close-up of the undamaged eye in Chucky's burnt head and slowly pulling back while also slightly tilting to reveal it completely. When Andy is being driven home by Phil and Joanne, they almost hit a Play Pals cargo truck that crosses in front of them, and after they stop, there's a shot of the company's artwork, complete with the image of a Good Guy, drawn on the truck's side reflected in the van's window, as Andy

looks and sees it. We do also get some more of those Chucky POV shots, like when he first makes his way to the house and reaches for the door handle, and when he closes in on the technician during the climax in the factory, but there's a moment that subverts it, where we see a POV of someone looking for a weapon in the kitchen, but it turns out to be Andy. Lafia also shows off a penchant for long tracking shots, like one that starts on the hallway outside Andy's bedroom, slowly pans back across the wall

and down to the bottom of the stairs, where Chucky stands upon first entering the house. There's another one that takes place the following night, which slowly pans over from Andy asleep in bed and goes in on Chucky, as he drops the inanimate toy act and smiles evilly at him. And when Kyle realizes that Andy was telling the truth about Chucky and heads up to Joanne's room, armed with a knife, the shot of her walking down the hallway towards the door is very, very slow.

On the contrary, though, there also some very fast instances of camerawork and editing, such as an upward, spiraling shot when Andy awakens to find that Chucky has tied him to the bed and gagged him; a very quick but memorable one looking through a keyhole when Chucky's eye comes into frame; an editing trick that cuts the camera further and further away from the classroom window as Chucky kills Miss Kettlewell; and a POV shot that frantically moves back and forth and then down to the floor after Kyle manages to throw Chucky off of her when he

attacks her in Joanne's bedroom (that was one of the moments I saw when I caught a glimpse of this movie that time I was in Florida). In addition, when Chucky is burying the Tommy doll, there's a POV shot looking up at him standing over the makeshift grave, followed by a slow, overhead shot of him filling it, laughing crazily. And finally, when Kyle shows up at the foster center with Chucky and is faced with Andy, there are a couple of shots from over her shoulder where, in a nicely Hitchcockian touch, it's revealed that Chucky is holding the knife right at the back of her head to make her do what he wants.

When I originally wrote this review, I said that I felt it was a mistake to move the main setting from the city of Chicago to a nearby suburban neighborhood, that such a bucolic, quiet, and often sunny neighborhood wasn't as successfully atmospheric in my opinion. Now, however, I feel I was wrong in that assessment. For one, I like the idea that the movie does kind of get into the dark side of suburbia, with Andy being taken there under the notion that he would not only be safe but able to live a peaceful existence and forget what he went through, only for it not to work out. Not only

is this because of Chucky's return, with his ability to easily slip inside the house because this is apparently the type of neighborhood where no one locks their doors at night, but also because of the issues with Andy's foster family and how school is no respite, as he has to deal with both bullying kids and a cruel, overbearing teacher. I also now think I was wrong when I said the inside of Joanne and Phil's house is never creepy, not even on a dark and stormy night, because it is rather off-putting. The paint scheme is a tacky pink and light-blue, the floors are covered in

decorative rugs, and the downstairs area has, as the authors of Reign of Chucky noted, a strange museum-like quality to it, as Phil and Joanne admit to collecting antiques, which the living room is full of. Upstairs, the hallways have a long, somewhat closed-in feel to them, and Andy's bedroom, while pleasant enough, has some weird, clown-themed toys and objects adorning it that wouldn't sit well with anyone with coulrophobia (though Andy doesn't seem to mind). While it and the backyard, with the swing,

little rose bush, and small trees convey something of a quintessential picture of suburbia, something about it just feels off. And one thing's for sure: Chucky or not, the basement is downright creepy, especially at night. The staircase that leads down there is not only kind of winding and twisted, but the back area is full of bizarre things like strange, wooden statues, some sort of old-fashioned, threading apparatus, and makeshift weapons, one of which is a sort of harpoon that Chucky uses to kill Phil.

The movie does actually begin with the city of Chicago, with the opening credits appearing above a montage of Chucky being rebuilt and Mr. Sullivan being driven to the Play Pals factory, having to wait for a tram to pass by, driving past a landfill, and finally arriving. We also get a taste of the seedier side prevalent in the first film when Mattson stops at a liquor home, with a flashing red, neon light that simply says, "LIQUOR," and the city streets also play a part in the lead-up to the climax. The inside of the Pal Pals factory's corporate side is interesting in that

the hallways' gray walls are lined with pictures of the Good Guy doll, cementing how it's their best-selling item, and the lab where Chucky is reconstructed and brought back to life is more colorful than you'd expect, with the walls painted blue, the technicians wearing blue uniforms, and parts of the equipment painted bright yellow. Some of the interiors of the foster center are also a bit colorful, like the room where Andy is introduced and, strangely, Grace Poole's office, but on the whole, what we see of it is rather drab, with the building's exterior not being all that appealing. And the look of the elementary school, both inside and out? Boy, does that bring memories, and not a lot of them good (fortunately, none of the schools I went to had a bell).

Hands down, though, the best location is the actual Play Pals factory, where the climax takes place. Don Mancini's intended setting for the first film's climax, it's not hard to see why this setpiece is, without a doubt, the most beloved in the whole series. First off, there's that massive storage area in the back, with hundreds upon hundreds of Good Guy doll boxes, stacked in various spots and different patterns, turning the place into a confusing maze. Then, when they finally get out of that, they have to get around this conveyor belt and small slide that the boxes are

traveling along, and that's only a prelude to the factory itself, which is just insane. Like so much of the rest of the movie, it's a lot more colorful than you would ever think this kind of place would be, with all the bright blues, reds, yellows, and greens, and the assembly line involves doll bodies traveling on a big system of conveyor belts, stopping in spots where elaborate, automated machines attach their various body parts. While it's cool, as both Mancini and John Lafia commented, the layout is completely absurd, with this chamber where the dolls go in one by one

and have arms and legs attached by these automatic hands that pull them in from the outside, which also has a nonsensical, reverse function that attaches more limbs when the dolls go back through; this overhead stapler that attaches hair onto one side of the head; and a huge vat of molten plastic with a valve that can spew it all over the floor. The most memorable section is the spot where the eyeballs are jammed into the dolls' eye sockets, and which can apparently only be fixed by getting in there and laying down on the

conveyor belt in order to get at the mechanics. Between that and the fact that there's no easy way to get around this place, with Andy and Kyle having to climb over the conveyor belts and through the machines just to reach an exit, which then turns out to be locked on the other side (automated or not, you do need actual human beings to be able to come in from time to time in order to fix things), there have probably been other casualties aside from that hapless technician who gets a pair of doll eyes gouged into his own.

Where Child's Play 2 falters the most for me personally is in some of the writing and pacing. Sorry to be a nitpicker but there are some aspects of the story that I have issues with, chief among them the implication that, according to Mattson when he talks to Mr. Sullivan at the beginning, both Mike Norris and Jack Santos denied what happened in the first film. While I can live with Mike and Karen not being in this film, I find it really hard to believe that he and Jack, especially Mike, would throw her and Andy under the bus like that, leading to Karen being

institutionalized and Andy placed in foster care. Granted, Mattson only says that the "police" denied everything, so maybe Mike and Jack tried back Karen and Andy up but the department fired them to keep them from being dragged into the scandal, but I just can't deal with the notion that Mike would do this to them. (Also since, later in the series, Mike is mentioned in passing as still having some kind of contact with Karen, I doubt she would've so easily forgiven him if he did that.) In addition, there are some plotholes I can bring up, such as, who do they

think committed the murders in the first movie? Given that he's now in the foster system, and Grace Poole tells Joanne and Phil that Andy tried to come to terms with what happened by making up his story about Chucky, they clearly don't think it's him anymore. So, do they think the killer just went off on his way? And wouldn't they find it just a little suspicious that Andy claimed his doll was possessed by Charles Lee Ray just days after he was killed? Similarly, after Chucky kills Phil, Andy, despite

Joanne clearly thinking he was somehow responsible, is merely sent back to the foster center to await re-adoption. So, did Joanne not tell the police what she felt? Maybe the police were still trying to piece together what happened when they took Phil's body away, given how they describe it as an "accident." Also, had nobody find Miss Kettlewell's body at that point? And did Joanne and Phil not find it strange that she never called after Andy apparently ran home to escape detention? When Kyle comes in through the 

window and finds Andy completely tied and gagged to his bed, does she really think he did that himself? Granted, the next day, she does ask him how he did it, but shouldn't that, as well as Chucky sitting right next to him, raise a few alarm bells? And finally, when Chucky calls the foster center to find out Andy's whereabouts, Grace apparently tells him, as he later makes Mattson drive him to that neighborhood. So, she just told this random person who claims to be Andy's "Uncle Charles," whom he never mentioned before, where he is?

As for pacing, it's weird for me to mention that, given that this movie is even shorter than the first (by just four minutes, but still), but it's always felt a little bit slower. It's not at all to the point where it becomes boring as, like the first, it does go by fast, but after Andy gets to the foster home and is promptly followed there by Chucky, things slow down just a bit, as we watch Andy try to adapt to this new home and family, as well as show them that he's well-adjusted by carrying around "Tommy." And even after Chucky reveals himself to Andy, things still go at a

leisurely pace, with him following Andy to school, the confrontation in the basement, and Chucky getting Kyle to take him to Andy. Maybe it's because John Lafia came up with a number of slower, more methodical scenes and instances of camerawork, whereas the original seemed to be just constantly moving, but this one doesn't feel quite as tight, despite being shorter. And yet, at the same time, once it gets going, the movie feels like it's rushing to get to the climax at the factory. I know I seem like I'm contradicting myself, but the fact that Chucky is

resurrected, tracks down Andy, and infiltrates his new home all on the very same day that the kid moves in with Joanne and Phil feels too fast. Granted, all of these movies take place over the course of just a few days, but this one's time-span comes off especially short, with the climax occurring just two nights after the story begins. Obviously, the reason for it is because Chucky has no time to lose, but it might've been more effective had he been resurrected like the next day or so, and shows up just when Andy is really starting to settle in and endear himself to his foster parents and even to Kyle, as well as when he's already had some trouble with Ms. Kettlewell.

Because of their disdain for the voodoo concept, Mancini and Lafia decided to minimize it as much as possible. As I said in my review of the first film, in both this and Child's Play 3, Mancini uses it as little more than as Chucky's motivation, with him still needing to put his soul into Andy here. They also specify what John meant when he told Chucky that he had to do it to the first person he revealed his "true self" too, with Andy telling the social worker in his first scene that it was because Chucky told him that he was really Charles Lee Ray. They also bring back

the idea that the doll body is slowly turning human again (though the heart being his weak point would never be brought back up), and reinforce the originally suggested notion that there's a ticking clock, that the merge with his soul and the doll will become permanent if he doesn't do it soon. But, while it doesn't screw around with the established mythology nearly as much as later movies would, Chucky's resurrection makes no sense. I know I said in my review of the first movie that you shouldn't think too hard about it, and I'm not taking it all that

seriously, but I do have some questions. First, while the first movie seemed to end with Charles Lee Ray's soul leaving the doll after he was finally killed, this film establishes that his soul is apparently still within it, just in limbo. Second, as they discuss in Reign of Chucky, had they not used the original doll's metallic skull, would Chucky be the same character he was before? And most significantly, what exactly happens at the beginning of the film? In the plot synopsis, I said that the machine that plants the plastic eyeballs 

into Chucky's head malfunctions and causes a power surge that not only killed the one technician but also brings him back to life, but I'm not entirely sure. The way the machine suddenly stops right before it puts the eyes in may just be a sudden malfunction, but they seem to be indicating that Chucky's evil soul is interfering with it, and I thought that the electrical surge was meant to be his soul being revived, especially given the demonic red glow within the eyes themselves, but that's only speculative. I can easily go with Chucky's resurrections in all of the other movies but this one still perplexes me.

Although I felt that some of it did make it into the final version of the original Child's Play, Don Mancini was able to get a little bit more of his intended dark satire on child's marketing and advertising into both this film and the next one. It would be especially pointed in the first real scene of Child's Play 3, but it's definitely here as well in the opening, with how Play Pals is trying to extinguish the bad publicity surrounding their best product and company mascot by taking the actual doll, which should really be in an evidence locker somewhere,

and rebuilding it to prove there's nothing wrong with it and put their stockbrokers at ease. You also get a sense of some of the rumors that have been circulating as a result of the story, with one of them being that someone at the company tampered with the doll's voice cassette to make it say the things Andy claimed Chucky said, as well as just how cynical this corporate world is, even when it involves something as innocent as children's toys. There is something inherently humorous about how Mr. Sullivan, the

president of a company called Play Pals and whose limousine's license plate reads, "FUN ONE," is an absolutely sour, sneering, and callous man who treats everyone around him like trash and will go to extreme lengths to protect his company's image and bottom line. When the one technician dies in such a bizarre and brutal way when Chucky is resurrected, all Sullivan is concerned with is covering up another death that's tied to the doll, threatening to fire Mattson

if he doesn't do it and adding, "As far as the stockholders and I are concerned, this matter is finished." And finally, Mancini also gets to allude back to his concept of the doll having artificial blood during the scene when Kyle and Chucky get stopped by the police and Chucky's nose suddenly bleeds, with Kyle commenting, "You've seen dolls that pee? This one bleeds."

In his direction, John Lafia made a number of references to other films, both horror and otherwise, with one of his biggest influences in some of his shot choices and camera angles having apparently been Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Chucky's electric resurrection, which ties into Lafia's original idea for how Charles Lee Ray's soul got into the doll, was meant as a direct homage to Frankenstein, which is fitting, given that it's Universal. Among others, he said that Kyle discovering Joanne's corpse and the way she swings into place after Kyle pulls the chair

around was meant as a reference to the discovery of Mrs. Bates' corpse in Psycho; Chucky rising up beneath the bed-sheet behind Kyle afterward was like when Michael Myers put a sheet over himself in Halloween; and while it was never confirmed, it's likely that Chucky replacing his severed hard with a knife-blade was meant as a reference to Ash doing the same with the chainsaw in Evil Dead II, since Lafia and Mancini are known to have been fans of Sam Raimi's work. And Chucky's head exploding at the end was meant as a reference to Brian De Palma's The Fury, which isn't surprising, given how much of a De Palma fan Mancini has admitted to being.

By the time Child's Play 2 came around, Kevin Yagher was now working on Tales from the Crypt, having created the character of the Cryptkeeper and also directing all of his segments on the show. Having now become all the more proficient with animatronic and puppetry, Yagher and his crew would make Chucky feel even more alive than he already did in the first film. Indeed, the effects work in the sequel involves everything done before, only made even better. Chucky's face is not only even more expressive, with the lip movements lining up better

with Brad Dourif's line readings (which were recorded beforehand, as would become the norm going forward), but he comes off as much more mobile, despite being a puppet 99.9% of the time here. There are several wide shots of the puppet walking and talking, something they'd planned to do in the first movie but could never perfect. The best of these is when Chucky walks out of the closet towards Miss Kettlewell, brandishing the ruler he beats her with. Though it's only a few seconds long, it was a shot that took forever for them to get right, as it

required so many different, perfectly coordinated movements and had to be filmed just right in order to hide the rig controlling the puppet. There are also impressive shots of Chucky flailing around wildly while fighting with somebody, him exploding out of a pile of Good Guy boxes, crawling up the little slide in the factory while stabbing at Andy, using a vice to remove a knife's handle and then jamming his bloody stump onto the blade, later busting out of a ventilation duct, and sliding across the floor on a little roller 

towards Andy, among so many other amazingly life-like actions. In fact, when Kyle is driving Chucky to the foster center, the puppetry and dialogue are so natural that it looks like two living characters sitting in the front seat, rather than an actor reacting to a special effect. They even made use of some oversized versions of Chucky's head and eyeball for some extreme close-ups.

Unlike Tom Holland and even Don Mancini, John Lafia was not keen on using Ed Gale in place of the animatronics, as was often the case in the first film. But, because they never knew if the effects would always work, Gale was rehired as something of an insurance policy. In the final movie, he only appears in two shots: the overhead one of Chucky burying Tommy and when you see Chucky's running shadow behind Andy during the scene in the basement. I hate to say it but I think they made the right call in keeping Gale's screentime to a minimum, as some of the shots

of him in the first film have not aged very well. Still, angry at the way he was treated, and even more so about some comments Lafia made after the movie was completed, Gale would refuse to have anything to do with Child's Play 3, although he would return for Bride of Chucky (only because he knew that Lafia was no longer involved with the franchise by that point).

Like the movie's tone, the kills themselves also strike a balance between being funny and scary, as they kind of go back and forth from being very over the top to realistic and quite mean-spirited. For instance, while the first death, that of the technician who gets shocked to death and launched through a window when Chucky is resurrected, is an insane stunt, Chucky's slow suffocation of Mattson with a plastic bag over his head is really disturbing to watch, especially if you're claustrophobic. Many of the deaths that follow are in that same vein, like how

Chucky stabs Ms. Kettlewell with a tire-pump and then beats her with a yardstick (I used to wonder how he could kill her with something that flimsy but I guess she bled out from being stabbed); kills Phil by snagging his foot, making him to fall through the stair railing, and then drops him, causing him to break his neck (the angle and sound of it really makes you cringe); gags and strangles Joanne, while also seemingly cutting her throat; and repeatedly stabs Grace Poole in the chest, although the latter is a bit offset by her falling into the copying machine and it

producing images of her dying face. But the film's final kill, that of the random maintenance worker in the Play Pals factory, is by far the silliest. While repairing the machine that jams the plastic eyeballs down into the doll's eye-sockets, Chucky attacks him, causing him to fall back onto the conveyor belt, and a pair of doll eyes get jammed into his own eye-sockets. Even more laughable than that is later on, when the corpse is now suddenly hanging from a rope and comes swinging in and slams into Kyle. How the hell did Chucky manage to tie that guy up and hoist him up into the air, especially when he only had one arm by that point?

Like the first film, Child's Play 2 is not an extremely gory film. Some of the kills, like Mattson and Phil, are totally bloodless, while others, like the technician at the start, Miss Kettlewell, and Grace Poole, are fairly bloody but not overtly so. The only truly gory and gross death is that of the factory technician and like I said, that one's extremely silly. Much of the blood in the film comes from Chucky himself, with his frequently bleeding nose (even when he's not injured, it randomly bleeds), him ripping his own hand off and jamming a knife-blade into it, him

getting torn apart in the one machine to where he's lost his legs, and finally getting his head blown up, with chunks of it falling on Andy and Kyle; Child's Play 3 would follow a similar route in terms of its violence. And there are, again, some brief instances of visual effects, like the electrical surging and red glow you see during Chucky's resurrection, and the storm clouds that gather above the Play Pals factory when he attempts the soul transference.

One thing you can count on with most of the Chucky movies is a really cool and memorable opening credits sequence. While the first one was straightforward, with the credits appearing over Mike Norris hunting down Charles Lee Ray and him putting his soul into the doll, it was still very effective. With the sequel, the opening credits play over a montage of Chucky's doll body being rebuilt inter-cut with Mr. Sullivan being driven to the factory. Starting with an eyeball being removed from his

charred skull, we see the burned plastic being stripped and scraped away from the metal underneath, the teeth scraped clean, a fresh latex covering placed over the skull once it's totally clean and polished, the freckles, eyelashes, and eyebrows sprayed on, and the limbs being attached to the body (Kevin Yagher is the one whose hands we see doing all this). It ends with the head, which now has hair, being attached, the battery slot's cover screwed on, a pair of batteries inserted, and the doll's clothes slipped on and his shoelaces tied. And of course, not long after that is when the technician is badly electrocuted and sent flying through the window by Chucky's resurrection.

After being told by Sullivan to stick Chucky up his ass following the incident, Mattson, for whatever reason, decides to take the doll with him when he leaves the factory that night. In the middle of a pouring rainstorm, he tries to put Chucky in the trunk, but when he can't close it, he angrily grabs the doll by the face and throws him in the backseat, which is randomly filled with toys (by this point, it's clear that anyone who manhandles Chucky pays for it dearly). After driving off, Mattson uses his car-phone to call

his date, Gabrielle, only to realize he forgot to pick up the vodka for the occasion. As he's talking, the film cuts to the backseat, where Chucky is now sitting up. He stops at a liquor store and heads inside, locking the car up. There's an eerie shot of Chucky, illuminated by the store's flashing red neon light, watching him, then turning his attention to the car-phone. He calls the foster center, finding the number after looking through the information on Andy that Mattson has in his briefcase, and talks with Grace

Poole. Inside the store, Mattson is disappointed when the guy rejects his credit card, and then hears his car alarm go off. Going out there, he finds no sign of an intruder, as Chucky is again lying face-down in the backseat. He gets back in and drives off, and down the road, Chucky suddenly reveals himself, holding a gun to him. Mattson, like I said, is surprisingly calm about being held at gunpoint by a doll, and does as Chucky says, driving on. Reaching the suburban neighborhood, Mattson parks in a public parking space upon Chucky's orders (he has to even roast the

guy's car, calling it a piece of shit). Chucky then tells him to put his arms behind the seat and, offscreen, he ties them up with a jump-rope. He presses the gun's muzzle into Mattson's cheek, as he begs for him to take whatever he wants and leave him alone. Chucky pulls the trigger, revealing it to be a squirt gun, and comments, "Bang, you're dead." He then laughs about it, as does Mattson in relief, until Chucky throws a plastic bag over his head from behind, pulling it and slowly suffocating the man to death, laughing evilly as he does so. Afterward, he gets out of the car, runs across the street, and slips into the Simpson house.

Once inside, he realizes he can't get at Andy just yet when he hears Joanne singing to him upstairs, and growls, "Shit!" He unintentionally activates the Tommy Good Guy doll by speaking and knocks it to the floor. It then starts malfunctioning, saying, "I like to be hugged," over and over again, and Chucky, grabbing the little statue that happens to be Joanne's family heirloom, slams it repeatedly into the doll's face, yelling, "Hug this!" He breaks both it and smashes Tommy's face, and then buries the doll in the

backyard, laughing evilly and sneering, "Eat dirt, Tommy!" (Both Don Mancini and John Lafia made no secret of the fact that that doll was named after Tom Holland and thus, this was their way of getting back at him for how they were treated on the first film). The next day, after Andy and Kyle are grounded for the statue being broke, there's a nice callback to the first film when Andy, growing suspicious about "Tommy," checks to see if there are any batteries in the doll, breathing a sigh of relief

when there are. (I like the suggestion that Andy felt the need to check because his mother likely told him that was how she discovered Chucky was alive, but this time, it doesn't matter.) Later, when Andy is out in the backyard with Kyle, he has Chucky sitting in a chair nearby, when the two of them start playing around on the swing. Said swing just happens to be right above where he buried Tommy, and Chucky becomes visibly nervous when he realizes they could potentially uncover the doll. Fortunately for him, Phil comes out to call them in for dinner, and they head

inside, with Kyle reminding Andy to bring his doll inside. That night, Chucky drops the act and attempts to do the soul transfer, but gets interrupted when Kyle climbs in through the window and eventually winds up in the basement thanks to Phil. Finding that his nose is bleeding after being tossed down there, he realizes he's running out of time to perform the ritual.

It took a number of watches before I realized that, when the school bus drives off with Andy the next day, you can see Chucky's feet dangling from underneath it. Later, at the school, while the kids are at recess, he's sneaked into the classroom and looks around the desk, searching for Andy's homework, which he defaces. Despite the fact that she probably took it from Andy herself, or considering it might be one of the other kids trying to make him look bad, Miss Kettlewell keeps him after school for detention,

forcing him to sit down in his desk. She unknowingly helps him by locking Chucky in the closet so Andy can't play with the doll, before leaving the classroom and locking him in. After Andy creeps up to the door, looks through the keyhole, and is surprised by Chucky, he quickly escapes out the window, while Chucky angrily bangs and kicks against the door, yelling at him to let him out. When Miss Kettlewell comes back, and finds Andy no longer in his seat and sees the closet door rattling, she somehow gets the

idea that Andy is in there, even though she knows she locked it! Unlocking it and stomping in, she starts looking around for Andy, only to find the closet surprisingly quiet and still. Looking in several spots and finding nothing, she's startled when a ball falls off from up high and bounces on her back. Sighing in relief, she picks it up and puts it back up where it was, when Chucky lunges out of the clothes and stabs her with the bike pump, sending her tumbling out of the closet and across the desks. That's when Chucky walks out of the closet, brandishing the yardstick,

then marches up to her, as she's too weakened to get away, and smacks her repeatedly. Back at the house, when Andy tries to make Joanne and Phil understand what happened, Chucky has already gotten back and is lying in the same spot where Phil threw him (think about how fast he must've been moving to get there in time to do that).

That night is when Andy takes the initiative by grabbing the carving knife in the kitchen and heading down into the basement to face Chucky. This sequence is slow and quite suspenseful, as Andy slowly walks down the stairs and then looks in the area behind them, searching every nook and cranny, and getting some false scares thanks to some of the weird, random things they have down there. After backing into the dryer, he opens it up and stabs into the clothes, when Chucky's shadow runs behind the

sheets hanging up behind him. Hearing the footsteps, Andy walks over there and pulls back the sheets, but sees nothing. But when he turns around, Chucky drops onto him from above and pins him to the floor, causing him to lose the knife. He desperately reaches for it, as Chucky bites into his ear, while upstairs, in the bedroom, Phil hears the commotion and goes to check. Despite Chucky having him in a choke-hold, Andy manages to reach the knife, aim it back, and get him in the side of the head, knocking him off. He runs for cover, when Phil appears at the top of the stairs

and, seeing Andy with the knife, attempts to talk him down. He manages to convince him to switch the knife off, but that's when Chucky snags his foot and causes him to fall to his death through the stair railing, leading to Joanne sending Andy back to the foster center.

After the police have left, Kyle goes out into the backyard for a late night smoke, tossing Chucky into a garbage can. Sitting on the swing, she casually swings back and forth, her feet scraping across the bare patch of ground beneath her, until she partially uncovers Tommy's foot. Curious, she hops down and pulls the whole doll out of the ground. Now clearly wondering if it's true, she cautiously heads back over to the garbage can, breathing heavily. When she removes the lid, she sees that, sure enough, Chucky is gone. Dropping the lid and looking around in a panic,

she hears a rustle up in Joanne's room. Calling for her but getting no response, Kyle goes back inside the house. Looking for any kind of weapon, she finds a small knife in a box in the closet and then very slowly makes her way upstairs and down the hall, towards Joanne's room, following a long string of yarn leading to the door. Hearing the sound of the sewing machine as she approaches, she opens the door and rounds the corner ahead of her. Seeing Joanne sitting at the sewing machine, her back turned, Kyle touches her shoulder, only to turn her around and find that she's

already dead. Shocked, she sits down on the bed, and that's when Chucky rises up and erupts through the sheet behind her, grabbing onto her shoulders and the back of her neck. Kyle flails about the room, slamming him into the wall and then a mirror, trying to force him to let go; unbeknownst to her, she drops the knife in the struggle. Falling back onto the bed, she tries to get him off her, as he viciously bites at her neck, finally grabbing a lamp stick and smacking him off. Turning around, she looks back back and forth,

seeing no sign of him, and then looks down to see the knife lying at her feet. But before she can reach it, Chucky grabs it from underneath the bed. Still brandishing the lamp stick as a weapon, she cautiously inches her way around the corner of the bed, heading towards the door, and bumping into Joanne's corpse. But when she backs by the corner leading to the door, Chucky flips her foot out from under her, causing her to hit the floor, and is immediately on her, holding the knife to her cheek.

He then makes her drive to him to the foster center and grows increasingly impatient about how slow she's going, even after they get pulled over. She puts her seat-belt on, complaining about it, and, after he threatens to kick her teeth in if she mouths off again, she slams on the brakes, sending him right through the windshield (apparently, Chucky weighs a ridiculous amount for a doll). He promptly pops up onto the hood and sticks his knife into ir with an angry yell, only for Kyle to floor it, the momentum slamming Chucky against the hood. After swerving

around, she hits a small pole on the sidewalk, sending him flying off and against a chain-link fence. She backs up and, bearing down on him, attempts to run him down. Chucky manages to duck out of the way and Kyle slams into the fence, apparently causing the car to stall. Getting her bearings straight, she realizes the foster center is right down the street and cautiously gets out of the car. But as soon as she's out, Chucky is on her from atop the car's roof and puts the knife to her neck, telling her, "Playtime's over." At the foster center, Andy, who's already changed out of his

pajamas, waiting for the inevitable, is surprised to hear the fire alarm ring. Leaving his room, he goes to exit the building with everybody else, only to stop at the top of the last section of stairway when she sees Kyle at the bottom, holding Chucky, who has the knife to the back of her neck. Grace shows up and tries to get Andy out of the building, when she spots Kyle. Figuring the alarm was her doing, she drags both her and Andy, for some reason, into her office to admonish her for it. Irritated, she takes Chucky from

her and, coming to life and exclaiming, "Amazing, isn't it?!", repeatedly stabs her in the chest, causing her to fall face-first into the copying machine. Kyle attempts to get Andy out of the room, but Chucky slams the door at the last minute, separating them. He tells Andy to move his ass, as well as to snap out of his daze over Grace's death. Outside, the fire department arrives, as everybody else in the building is evacuated, while Andy and Chucky make it down to the sidewalk. Seeing a newspaper van pull up

nearby (with the door to its back open, for some reason), Chucky orders Andy to run and duck inside. By the time Kyle manages to open the office door, she finds it empty, save for Grace's body, and climbs out the same window that Andy and Chucky did. Making her way down to the street, she sees the van drive off at the last minute and futilely chases after it. When that doesn't work, she runs back to her car, manages to get it working again, and takes off after them, going past the firetrucks and ignoring orders to slow down.

It takes a little bit but Kyle does catch up with the van (which is for the Chicago Sun-Times, a possible little thanks to Roger Ebert, who gave the first Child's Play a positive review; however, neither he nor Gene Siskel liked this or the next film). In the back, Chucky prepares to do the chant, only for Kyle's headlights to illuminate him as she honks the horn at the van's driver, much to his frustration. When that doesn't work, she gets alongside him, managing to get his attention, and yells at him to pull over. But when the confused driver doesn't comply, she swerves in front

of him, forcing him to stop. She immediately gets out and runs to the back (which, again, was wide open this whole time), but finds that Andy and Chucky are gone. The angry driver grabs and yells at her, demanding to know what she's playing at, when she sees Andy running on the opposite side of the road. Managing to break free of the driver's grip, she chases after him and Chucky, as they happen to reach the Play Pals factory. They run in through a loading door as it slowly closes, while Kyle gets held up by a passing truck and ultimately has to do a roll in order

to get through. Inside, Chucky waits until they're at the center of the maze of Good Guy boxes, then knocks Andy unconscious and prepares to finally perform the ceremony, declaring, "This is it, world! From now on, no more Mr. Good Guy." He starts the chant and the storm clouds gather over the factory, along with the flashing lightning, as Kyle tries to navigate around the boxes to find them. Chucky says the entire chant, the boxes around him begin to shake from the wind and rumbling thunder, and then,

suddenly everything goes quiet and the clouds dissipate. For a second, it seems as though he succeeded... until blood drips from his nose and he realizes he's out of time and the change has become permanent. Utterly enraged, he grabs his knife and, as Andy scoots away from him, screams about how he's now trapped inside the doll. Then, before he knows it, the boxes atop one pile rattle (I love Chucky's incredulous, "What the hell?!", at this), and then fall onto him, courtesy of Kyle. She tells Andy to run for it, as Chucky explodes out of the pile, screaming in rage.

Andy meets up with Kyle and the two of them try to find their way out of the virtual maze, at one point reaching a dead end. They eventually manage to come out of it, into an open area with a conveyor built of Good Guy boxes heading to their left. With no choice but to go the other way, they climb up a slide leading up from the conveyor belt, with Kyle going first. Reaching the top, she tries to help Andy by taking his hand and pulling him up, but his hand slips and he heads back down the slide. At the bottom, Chucky emerges and starts chasing him back up the slide,

stabbing furiously at his legs. Barely dodging the knife, Andy makes it to the top of the slide and Kyle drops a section of grating, pinning Chucky's right hand beneath it. Yelling in pain, he watches as the two of them climb down and run into the heart of the factory, yelling that he's going to get them yet. Unable to lift the grate, he slowly and excruciatingly pulls his hand until it tears off completely. Despite the pain and shock at what he just did, he reaches through the grating and grabs the knife, while Andy and Kyle come upon the machine that puts the eyeballs into the

dolls. Seeing an exit on the other side, they slowly climb through, Kyle again going first and having to help Andy, both of them avoiding getting doll eyes stabbed into them; elsewhere, Chucky uses a vice to remove the knife's handle, then jams his bloody stump into it and duct-tapes it up. Though they make it around the machine, the find that the door won't open, forcing them to look for another way out. At the same time, the eyeball machine's conveyor belt gets jammed up with dolls and stops works. A lone

technician working there is alerted and heads down to fix it, while Andy and Kyle continue trying to navigate the factory. Elsewhere, Chucky kicks his way out of an air vent, and kills the hapless technician just as he fixes the machine, leading to his memorable death (it's weird how he had to get in there with a wrench and twist some things, given how it was just a pile-up that brought it to a halt).

Still trying to find a way out, Andy and Kyle see the assembly line in reverse when Andy accidentally bumps into a control panel on the conveyor belt's side, causing the dolls to go backward while an alarm sounds; Chucky hears this in another part of the factory. When Kyle presses the button that sets the process forward again, the one doll comes back out of the machine with various hands and feet attached all over its body. Watching this, Kyle is startled when she hears a clatter nearby, only to see it was a doll falling over on another part of the assembly line. But then,

Chucky shows up, riding on one of the small platforms on the belt in front of them, and, laughing, swings his blade at Andy. Kyle yells for him to duck and then hits Chucky with a toolbox, causing him to fall backwards into the mechanism that attaches the hair to the dolls. He yells in pain as strands of hair are stapled through his pants legs, as well as his flesh, and onto the platform. Once it's done, he's completely stuck, and Andy throws the conveyor belt in reverse again. Chucky actually tries to appeal to Andy's childlike naivety by saying, "Andy, please, I was only

playin'!", but Kyle returns the middle finger he gave her earlier. Once he ends up inside the machine that attaches the limbs, he can be heard yelling continuously, as numerous arms and legs are jammed into him. Once he stops yelling, Andy hits the forward button on the controls, and a bloody, steaming mess of body parts comes rolling down. Shocked at this, but figured that they finally defeated him, Andy and Kyle head to leave, not seeing a trail of blood leading away from the conveyor belt and 

towards a nearby pulley. Out of nowhere, the technician's hanging body comes swinging in, knocking Kyle onto the conveyor belt and rendering her unconscious. Andy then dodges the swinging body until the line it's hanging from runs out and it tumbles down in the back. Chucky appears, reduced to a torso and having to use a small cart to move, but determined to get back at Andy by slicing off his own legs. He cuts an air line near the vat of molten plastic, then lunges at Andy, but gets his blade jammed into a

grill. He tries to free himself, when a drop of molten plastic hits the top of it and he looks up. Seeing he's right under the vat's valve, he loudly gasps when Andy grabs the wrench attached to it. He then opens it up and the plastic comes streaming out, completely covering Chucky, as he screams in agony.

Closing the valve, Andy then runs to save Kyle from getting caught up in the machine that tore Chucky apart, shaking her awake in the nick of time. Getting her off the belt, the two of them walk over to where Chucky has been reduced to a gooey blob on the floor, with the severed air hose flailing around next to him. Though disgusted at this, Kyle also gives Andy props, as she bends down to get a better look. That's when Chucky suddenly pops up, grabs her, and lunges at her repeatedly, as she holds him back. Andy tries to pull her out of his grip but is unable to, and Kyle then

grabs the air hose and jams it into his mouth, yelling, "Eat this, you son of a bitch!" Chucky lets go of her and, as she backs away, she and Andy watch as his head quickly inflates. They then take cover below a walkway, as his head expands well beyond its limits and explodes, sending bloody chunks up into the air and raining down on them. With Chucky finally dead, the two of them manage to get out of the factory through the same loading door they entered, walking off into the morning light, though unsure of where they're going.

But that's now how my cousin Mikey, who saw these movies long before I did, told me it ended. He told me about Chucky's death, but he also said that the movie ended with a chunk of his face floating in a tank of hot plastic and that led to one of the machines creating a new doll head that smiled evilly. So, imagine my confusion when I first watched the movie on VHS and this ending was nowhere to be found, and how confused Mikey was when I told him. Of course, that turned out to be the ending to the TV version, which I first learned of when looking up info

about the movies on IMDB, and finally saw many years later, on Sci-Fi Channel. It's very similar to the opening sequence of Child's Play 3 (which I like a lot more) and is probably where they got the inspiration for that, but, as interesting as it is, I think it was a good idea to cut it, as it's best for the movie to end at the height of its momentum. Other additional moments in the TV version include the lights going out after the technician is electrocuted, followed by the sound of Chucky's footsteps scuttling about,

which Mattson hears; some more dialogue between Andy and his counselor when the former is first introduced, as well as an alternate take when he asks Andy if he still dreams about Chucky; Mattson scoffing at Mr. Sullivan after he walks out the door, then sits down next to Chucky; Joanne asking Andy if he's okay after they nearly hit the Play Pals truck; Mattson turning out to be a cheater, as he calls his wife before Gabrielle; and Chucky looking through Mattson's briefcase while he's in the liquor store, pausing briefly at a picture of Charles Lee Ray (this makes a third shot of Ed Gale). 

The most significant alternate and extended scenes involve the foster parents and make Phil into a much more sympathetic character, as well as show him being more affectionate towards Joanne. Though he has more of a reaction when he first hears Andy's claims about Chucky, he then says he wants to make sure they're not getting into something they can't handle by fostering Andy and acquiesces when he sees it means a lot to Joanne. One of the best scenes is when Joanne tells Phil that they were, yet again, turned down to officially adopt children, which

especially angers him, though he's mostly angry for her, saying, "Did you tell them that you quit your job, that you spend all day cooped up in this house, looking after other people's kids, and getting your heart broken every time one of them leaves?" He then says that he hates seeing her go through that again and again, but when she says she's happy making a difference in these kids' lives, Phil says that he's happy if she's happy. And after Andy and Kyle head off to school, Phil and Joanne have a conversation

about sending Andy back, made up of dialogue taken from two scenes that are in the theatrical version. However, Phil's tone is a lot softer, as he apologizes for a remark he makes, then says, "You know he's gonna leave us eventually anyway. Kyle too. They don't belong to us." Joanne says she wishes she knew how to help Andy and Phil saying, "We can only do our best with them. We can't be responsible for a child like Andy. He needs more help than we can give him." I really wish these scenes had been left in the theatrical version, as they make Phil come off so much better and also give him and Joanne much more depth. All of these additional scenes were released as an extra on Scream Factory's 4K/Blu-Ray release of the film in 2022.

For whatever, Joe Renzetti didn't return to score Child's Play 2; instead, the score was the work of Graeme Revell, who would return to the series eight years later for Bride of Chucky. Unlike Renzetti's dark and genuinely frightening music, Revell's score has more of an air of thrilling fun about it, in keeping with this film's tone. It's also completely orchestral, unlike the original's mostly electronic nature. The opening theme has a bigger-than-life, almost operatic sound to it, introducing a memorable leitmotif for Chucky that plays throughout the film in numerous versions, and would prove popular enough with the fans to be repurposed as the main theme for the Chucky television series. The music also tends to go for the more playful, childlike tone of the series overall, with an eerie-sounding, child-like melody that you hear then and now, as well as moments that sound very music box-like, such as when Andy creeps up to the closet that Chucky is locked inside in the classroom and when Chucky goes in for the kill on Miss Kettlewell. The music for the more suspenseful moments, like when Andy and Kyle nearly uncover Tommy in his "grave," when Chucky comes to life in Andy's room, and when Andy goes down into the basement to find him, is nicely tense, while the more fast-paced sequences, like the car chase and much of the climax in the factory, is very exciting and really manages to keep the momentum going. My favorite part of the latter is this really tense, menacing horn theme that you hear when Chucky begins chasing Andy and Kyle throughout the factory when he realizes he's stuck in the doll, and the frantic piece that plays when he chases Andy up the small slide. Finally, the ending credits is scored as a virtual symphony of the score's best moments, going from the creepy music box-like theme to a piece that sounds kind of sad and tragic, and finally ends with the most thrilling and exciting pieces.

All in all, Child's Play 2 is quite a good sequel. It has great actors and well-remembered characters, lots of inspired direction, is very well-made on a technical level, Chucky is still on form (both effects- and performance-wise), it makes good use of its suburban main setting, interesting elements in the story like the little jab at corporations and how the neighborhood isn't quite as innocent as it seems, a very thrilling climax in the factory, a great music score that fits the film well, and overall, is an easy watch that goes by fast. While it's still not among my absolute favorites, that, aside from my personal preference for the original's tone and feel, as well as that of some of the others, mainly comes down to some issues I have with the writing, as I feel there are some real holes in the story, as well as that it could've unfolded more effectively. Still, this is a very entertaining flick, and one I would much rather watch than either Seed of Chucky or Cult of Chucky.