A mother gives her 13-year-old son a toy doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature.
Aubrey Plaza and Gabriel Bateman in CHILD'S PLAY
Child's Play is a 2019 American horror film directed by Lars Klevberg and written by Tyler Burton Smith, serving as a remake and reboot of the 1988 film of the same title. The film stars Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plazaand Brian Tyree Henry, with Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky, following a family that is terrorized by a high-tech doll that rejects its programming, becoming self-aware and murderous.
The film was officially announced in July 2018, and is the first film featuring Chucky produced without the involvement of creator Don Mancini or actor Brad Dourif. Klevberg and Smith signed on as director and screenwriter, respectively, alongside It producers Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg.
The film was theatrically released in the United States on June 21, 2019, by Orion Pictures through the United Artists Releasing joint-venture, marking the first Child's Play film since Seed of Chucky not to be produced nor distributed by Universal Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the cast performance, clever kills, and dark humor, but criticized the inconsistent tone, Chucky's design and the puppet effects.
Chucky and Gabriel Bateman in CHILD'S PLAY
MastersFX, a visual effects company, took six weeks to prepare and assemble seven practical animatronic puppets, each with interchangeable arms and heads that performed a variety of required actions on set. With some help from Pixomondo, who will be provided the CGI for the film.
Gabriel Bateman and Brian Tyree Henry in CHILD'S PLAY
Multinational Kaslan Corporation has just launched Buddi, a revolutionary line of high-tech dolls, quickly becoming a success for children worldwide. At a Buddi assembly factory in Vietnam, an employee is fired by his supervisor for insufficient work. In retaliation, the employee manipulates the doll that he is assembling, disabling all of its safety features, before committing suicide. The doll is packed alongside others in preparation for international delivery.
In Chicago, retail clerk Karen Barclay and her 13-year-old hearing-impaired son Andy moves into their new apartment, where Karen encourages her son to make new friends while she works to prepare for his upcoming birthday. In an attempt to cheer Andy up and make up for the unease cause by the moving, as well as the presence of her new boyfriend Shane, Karen blackmails her boss in order to procure a Buddi doll, introducing it to Andy as an early birthday gift. Once Andy activates the doll, it names itself Chucky and becomes attached to Andy. Over time, Chucky helps Andy befriend two other children in the building, Falyn and Pugg, but also begins to display violent tendencies. He strangles the Barclays' hostile pet cat after it scratches Andy, and one night, while Andy and his friends gleefully watch a horror film, Chucky starts mimicking the violence on the screen, approaching the trio with a kitchen knife, before Andy disarms him.
Andy arrives home the next day to find that his cat is dead; Chucky admits to murdering it so that it would not hurt him anymore. Karen locks the doll in a closet, but he escapes and further terrorizes Shane, which leads him to confront Andy. After overhearing Andy's pleas for Shane to disappear, Chucky follows him home, where it is revealed that Shane has a family and has been having an affair with Karen behind his wife's back. While Shane is outside taking down Christmas lights, Chucky frightens him into falling from the ladder, breaking both of his legs. Chucky activates a tiller which scalps and kills him. The following day, Chucky delivers Shane's skinned face as a gift to a horrified Andy.
While police detective Mike Norris begin an investigation, Andy, Falyn and Pugg decide to disable Chucky and dispose of him in the garbage. Building voyeur and electrician Gabe finds the doll and takes him to the building's basement to prepare him for online sale. Now fully repaired, Chucky tortures and murders Gabe with a table saw. After making his way back to ground level, Chucky ends up in possession of another kid in the building, Omar, and proceeds to kill Mike's mother, Doreen, in a self-controlled car accident. Meanwhile, Andy fails to convince Karen that Chucky has become murderous, and she takes Andy along to her next shift at the shopping mall where she works in order to keep him nearby.
Suspecting that Andy is the killer, Mike travels to the mall and apprehends him just as Chucky takes full control of the building. Chaos is unleashed as several employees and customers are brutally killed by self-controlled Buddi dolls and other hacked toys, while Chucky triggers the mall's lockdown sequence. Mike is wounded amid the massacre, and Andy and his friends manage to reach the exit, only for Andy forced to return when Chucky reveals that he is holding Karen hostage, planning to kill her. Andy manages to free his mother while being attacked by Chucky, before overpowering and defeating the doll with help of Karen and Mike. While paramedics tend Karen, Mike and other survivors, Andy and the rest of his friends destroy Chucky's lifeless body in a nearby alleyway.
In the aftermath of Chucky's killing spree, Kaslan Corporation CEO Henry Kaslan issues a statement regarding Chucky's programming, and as more Buddi dolls are shown being recalled and placed into storage, one starts malfunctioning inside its box.
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with Elevation Pictures