I love my aunt and uncle very much.
When I was four and they were, like nine or ten, they locked me in a room with Bride of Chucky playing on the TV.
Haven’t been completely right ever since.
Mustering through my pediophobia, I sat down and watched the first Child’s Play film for the first time in years. And Chucky is a damn good villain, guys. Why? Because, like all good villains, he has a clear-cut want.
Horror is made up of monsters and serial killers, yet the ones that really stick out to me are the ones who have desires outside of their homicidal desires. No offense to Michael and Jason, but this at least gives the story some internal propulsion. Let me give a few examples:
Leprechaun: Wants his gold back.
Jeepers Creepers: Take body parts from his victims to replace the ones in his own body that are failing.
Female gremlin: She just wants love. For that is the greatest motivation of all.
AUDIENCE: Aaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww!
Yet the king of (and I’m being 100% serious here) feeing like a real, flesh and blood character with wants and needs, is Charles Lee Ray.
Recap: Charles is a serial who gets shot by a police officer in a local toy story. Using voodoo, he seals his soul into a Good Guy doll before he dies. Single mom, Karen, buys the doll from a rapey hobo (as you do) and gives to her son, Andy, for Christmas. Charles, now going by his old nickname, Chucky, befriends Andy by revealing that he’s alive. After settling a few scores and killing a nanny, Chucky visits his old voodoo teacher who informs him that his soul his converting the doll into a real human body until it becomes permanent. The only way out is to transfer his body into the first person he revealed himself to: Andy.
All this gives Chucky three things: a ticking clock, stakes, and an external goal.
Ticking clock: the Good Guy doll is turning human.
Stakes: wait too long and he’ll stay trapped as the doll.
Goal: possess Andy’s body.
BUT none of this involves killing Andy. Chucky, and by extension us the audience, have no freaking clue what will happen to the kid if the possession ritual is successful. And this has haunted me for over two decades now.
Does Andy’s soul go to heaven or get damned to Hell (if either exist in this universe)? Is he trapped in his own body, suppressed and forever forced to watch Charles Lee Ray drive? Or, and this is the one that really messes with me, will Andy be doomed to switch places with Ray and stay stuck inside the Good Guy doll?
Because of this freaking movie, the very concept of having my body stolen out from under me by an evil outside force terrifies me. As human beings we kind of take ownership of our bodies for granted. We’re all given one body and, despite how badly injured it gets or badly you neglect it or unsatisfied, it’ll always be your body until your time of dying…
Plus, just imagine getting trapped inside a ginger doll!
…Shudder…
Yet all these questions go unanswered because Chucky misses the deadline and ends up trying to kill Andy and his mom anyway, going out like your usual horror monster. But the fact remains that, until then, he wanted something. He had goals.
And that’s why Child’s Play is the best Christmas movie of all time.
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