Living with Chucky (2022)

Living with Chucky (2022)

Dir. Kyra Elise Gardner

A documentary in which various cast and crew members from the Child's Play movies discuss their experiences of the filmmaking process and their relationship to the killer doll, Chucky.

The montage of clips near the beginning is a great reminder of why the knee-high slasher is such an iconic character; it made me want to re-watch all seven movies again. (The shitty reboot from 2009 is ignored, as it ought to be.)

For the most part, the doc follows a traditional formula, which is a collection of talking-heads clips arranged into a basic chronological narrative of the filmmaker's / editor's design, including words from actors Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Christine Elise, Jennifer Tilly, and Fiona Dourif. There's also input from some of the writers, producers, directors, and puppeteers.

As a Child's Play fan, I enjoyed it very much, but as a documentary it does stumble a little.

For example, its attempt to portray the individuals as some kind of "Chucky family" felt overly forced, and the 10-15 minutes of footage at the end seemed to exist for no real reason other than to get the director into her own film. A pleasing experience for her, in all likelihood, and complementary to the previously mentioned 'family' aspect, I suppose, given that she's the daughter of the head-puppeteer, but its placement made it feel somewhat superfluous. [1]

I also wondered why folks with no direct connection to the franchise were being interviewed. It felt like filler and their inclusion seemed at odds with the 'family' notion, and gave me no reason to care about what they had to say - that's aside from having no idea who most of them even were. A shorter, tighter, more relevant to topic edit would've made the film even more enjoyable.

[1] That's 'head' as in highest ranking, not that he controlled the puppet's head - although he maybe did that too, in which case he'd be head puppeteer in charge of puppeteering the head.

- Director Kyra Elise Gardner and a sweet-faced Chucky. -