Lars Klevberg’s Child’s Play Reboot: From Magic to Materialism

The message seems to be that in a world without magic, our imaginations are corrupted by mere consumerism

I can't imagine anybody thinking that the recent reboot of Child's Play is a great film. It has all the markings of a movie that a studio tosses a little money at, knowing that horror is a pretty dependable return-on-investment, hoping that it can last about a month in theaters before moving into the streaming market, where it will get rented fairly consistently by Gen Xers hungry for 80s nostalgia. Nonetheless, it actually isn't all that bad either. The comedy mostly works, the scares are pretty effective, and production quality makes it all believable enough for a fun night out.

In addition, the way this film re-imagines the original gives the viewer something to think about, perhaps in ways its predecessor never could have. The social commentary here is actually pretty interesting. In fact, as I write this sentence, I might even make the case that the film is pretty close to great after all. There is an important political message buried in this revision of an icon of Ronald Reagan's decade, and it's one we should probably pay attention to.

Director Tom Holland's (the one who isn't Spider-Man) original Child's Play (1988) probably remains the superior horror film. For those unaware of the premise, the movie introduced the world to Chucky, the possessed doll that became an instant horror icon, spawning multiple sequels even before this reboot.

In Holland's original film, Chucky is born when serial killer Charles Lee Ray (the amazing Brad Dourif) is mortally wounded in a gunfight with the police and invokes a Voodoo ritual to transfer his soul to the nearest object, a "Good Guy" doll in a toy store. When Chucky finds his way into the home of young Andy (Alex Vincent), he begins his quest for revenge against the partner who abandoned him and the cop who killed him (Chris Sarandon), murdering everyone in his way.

Lars Klevberg's 2019 remake completely changes the premise, removing magic from the mix altogether. Here, Chucky (Mark Hamill) is an A.I. powered doll that connects to other pieces of technology produced by the Kaslan Corporation. Think of an embodied form of Amazon's Alexa. An exploited factory worker in Vietnam, in an act of workplace vengeance just before his suicide, removes all the technological safety protocols from a unit, creating a powerful, murderous A.I.

In both films, murder and mayhem ensue from each premise, but the film's share a few important themes, and that continuity helps shed some light on what this new film is trying to do.

First off, they both feature strong single mothers. In the original, Catherine Hicks (apparently preparing for her future iconic mother role on Seventh Heaven?) was the hard-working, widowed mother of Andy, Karen Barclay. In the new version, Aubrey Plaza adds some scruff and dysfunction to the character, but retains her dignity, commitment, and strength. The original film undermined cultural assumption about the power (and necessity) of men. Chris Sarandon's cop is either an obstacle or someone to be saved throughout most of the film. Klevburg seizes on this theme and uses it to his political advantage in the remake.

In addition, the new film retains the original's emphasis on economic precarity. Both films depict cities under extreme economic hardship. For instance, neither version of Karen can actually afford the coveted Chucky doll for their child and must resort to alternative means to do so. Originally, Karen buys the cursed doll from a homeless man (from a LARGE homeless community). In the new version, she has to blackmail a coworker into not sending the returned doll back for destruction. In both cases, the women are poor and they live in desperately poor conditions: in the remake, the city could be from a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Clearly there is an economic critique in both of these films.

The new Child's Play uses contemporary tech fear instead of magic

Any good remake should make significant updates, however, and Klevburg's version introduces several significant changes (in addition to the A.I. aspect of the character).

First of all, Chucky's motivation is utterly different. Brad Dourif's Chucky was motivated by criminal insanity and vengeance. Mark Hamill's version of the villain shares much in common with 2001's HAL. His motivation is more human, as he seeks Andy's love and then, later, self-preservation.

The remake also quite appropriately introduces the subject of cell phones and social media as an important theme. This version of Andy is older than the original, and like most pre-teens, he spends a significant part of his life immersed in screen technology. The kids in this film are rather brutal to one another and the only real community that forms between them is mediated by technology: phones, games, and, yes, Chucky himself. Klevburg's film is absolutely trying to say something about alienation and loneliness and their relationship to technology.

Another change is in the characterization of Chucky's corporate creator. In the original, Chucky is a "Good Guy" doll, a product connected to a popular cartoon. While certainly the film makes the whole enterprise out to be silly (a kind of parody of the Cabbage Patch Kid craze of the 80's), the corporation isn't really responsible for the mayhem. That was all on the demented Charles Lee Ray.

The blame is radically relocated in this version. The Kaslan Corporation immediately takes the role as villain here. It's public face, the Jeff Bezos-like Henry Kaslan (Tim Matheson), is both pitchman and apologist for the company, which wields a terrifying amount of control into the lives of this world's people. After viewing this film, it's hard not to ask "what if Alexa went bad and started...oops." This is a world in which the corporation controls the very desires of its citizens. 

Thus, it makes perfect sense that, where the original film begins in a store, this one reaches its climax in one. Whereas the first film was a rather simple supernatural revenge film, this one is a large-scale indictment of consumerism. And in the movie's horrific climax, it is consumers at large, not particular individuals in Chucky's way, that are terrorized (if seeing gallons of blood sprayed into the face of a screaming child bothers you, this movie may not be for you).

The power that the Kaslan Corporation holds over consumers is in full view in the crowd's almost orgasmic anticipation for the new version of the A.I doll. This misplaced desire is punished in Chucky's elaborate, blood-soaked retribution.

The consumerism of this film of course functions in the context of a massive, global economic system. The exploitation of consumer desires and imagination is inseparable from the exploitation of Kaslan's employees. The horror begins, after all, when a worker in a Vietnamese factory is finally pushed too far by the profit-exploiting demands of Henry Kaslan's company.

Chucky has been one of horror's great icons for three decades and running. To re-imagine the franchise in the way that Lars Klevburg has here is a bold and welcome move. The world has changed a lot since the 1980s. The original Child's Play poked brutal fun at a certain consumer madness in Reagan's America, but this new version is an unblinking gaze at the consequences of Reagan's free-market optimism. By giving the world over to market-justice and corporate profits, Reagan's 1980's replaced awe-inspired wonder with cold materialism.

Klevberg's remake of Child's Play recognizes where that all leads. It also replaces magic with materialism and the message seems to be that in a world without magic, our imaginations are corrupted by mere consumerism.