Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Karen, a single mother, gifts her son Andy a Buddi doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature. A contemporary re-imagining of the 1988 horror classic.
This 2019 reboot replaces the supernatural voodoo angle with an AI/smart-home satire concept that feels fresher on paper than in execution. The plot is serviceable but uneven, leaning on familiar slasher beats without fully exploiting its tech-horror premise. The cast (Aubrey Plaza, Mark Hamill voicing Chucky) performs capably given the material, elevating otherwise thin characterization. Cinematography is competent genre work — functional but unremarkable. As a remake it inherits the killer-doll concept wholesale, and while the AI twist offers some differentiation, it doesn't go far enough to feel truly distinctive. The climax devolves into a fairly routine mall-set slaughter that fails to capitalize on the smart-device satire setup, leaving the ending unsatisfying.