Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Child's Play 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

"Andy? You still dreamin' about Chucky?"

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown October 4, 2013

Director Don Mancini's Child's Play trilogy and subsequent Chucky sequels aren't exactly unique among fan-favorite horror series. The first installment remains unmatched. Reinvention is the franchise's lifeblood. Camp slowly displaces straight scares. The diabolical baddie becomes more central to the story with each passing film. The human element becomes more and more inconsequential. The kills gorier, the deaths zanier, the body count higher, the satire more pronounced, the entries more niche, and the true series fans that much more ravenous. Like the Friday the 13th, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street sagas before it, the Chucky movies aren't so much about developing a terrifying mythos as they are keeping a franchise alive and kicking. And, like the well-established icons of the genre before it, the series' undying killer has become an indelible fixture in horror, no matter how hit or miss the original Child's Play sequels may be. Chucky has slashed his way through four different decades -- the 1980s (Child's Play), 1990s (Child's Play 2, Child's Play 3, Bride of Chucky), 2000s (Seed of Chucky and 2010s (Curse of Chucky) -- and I suspect this won't be the last.

"Okay, sport. We're gonna have a little game of Chucky Says."

Chucky of course is actually Charles Lee Ray, or the Lakeshore Strangler if you're feeling morbidly nostalgic; the briefly disembodied spirit of a voodoo-practicing serial killer forever possessing a Good Guy doll, best friend to children everywhere. More than that, Chucky is voice actor Brad Dourif's rampaging id. Murderous, maniacal and armed with a barbed wit and twisted sense of humor, Dourif (and Mancini's puppeteers) summon the obsessive drive of Jason Vorhees, the mercilessness of Michael Myers and the riotous, madcap lunacy of Freddy Kreuger. (As a grown man with a wholly irrational and debilitating fear of dolls, I can attest to Manchini's grasp of precisely what makes the knee-high ankle-slashers the stuff of cold-sweat nightmares. It doesn't mean Mancini is the greatest writer or director, mind you, but a healthy twinge of genre terror goes a long way, even through the silliest of sequels.)

In director John Lafia and writer Don Mancini's decent and decently scary Child's Play 2, Andy (Alex Vincent) is shipped off to a foster home where -- surprise, surprise -- Chucky soon arrives with a newly cast, rebuilt Good Guy body, having been reassembled by Play Pals for some ungodly reason. And wouldn't you know it, no one believes young Andy when he starts spouting crazy warnings about knife-wielding dolls and the spirits of serial killers. So begins another slash-n-slice-n-snap horror pic in watch Chucky murders anyone that comes between him and his chosen host. Eventually, the chaos spills out of Andy's new foster home, into the outside world and, finally, into the Good Guy doll factory, where Andy's only ally -- foster sister Kyle (Christine Elise) -- is all that stands in Chucky's way.

After MGM put a bullet in Mancini's plans for a Child's Play franchise, producer David Kirschner went to virtually every studio in town. Rejection followed rejection. Horror was no longer a hot commodity. More determined than ever, Kirschner and Mancini forged ahead regardless with the first independently financed sequel in the still fledgling series. With the film finished, Universal stepped in and helped bring the film to theaters where it nearly tripled its budget with a $36 million box office take. Apparently Chucky was harder to kill than MGM anticipated. So began Universal's stake in the franchise... and one of the more watchable sequels in the series. Child's Play 2 retreads familiar ground, upping the ante with more kills, more blood, more Chucky, and a more endlessly deadly endgame. Unfortunately, it does so with scattershot performances and an increased self-awareness that works against its shadow-stalking horror. It isn't remotely as bad as Child's Play 3, which even Mancini has disowned to some degree, but it isn't as tight or unsettling as the original either. The first sequel's suspense is more artificial than organic, and its house of horrors more a breeding ground for predictable deaths and inevitable showdowns than anything more disturbing. Child's Play 2 earns a pass, but functions more as a guilty pleasure than a tried and true genre standout.

Child's Play 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

No one will mistake Child's Play 2 for a film shot yesterday. It's grainy, gritty, old school horror grisliness is fully intact, which will no doubt irritate those who enjoy more spit-shine to their catalog titles. However, it's difficult to imagine the sequel's 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation looking much better than it does here, with competently saturated colors, strong primaries, inky black levels and some rather striking detail. Grain has been preserved for the most part, chunky as it is (no egregious scrubbing or DNR to report); edges are rather sharp, albeit a tad pronounced; textures are reasonably well-resolved; and the softness that appears traces back to the source. Print damage and encoding issues are also few and far between, and I didn't notice any significant artifacting or banding. The only major eyesore worth mentioning involves a few shots (mainly at the beginning) that suffer from over-cranked contrast, and several more (scattered throughout the film) hindered by unnatural skintones. Otherwise, Child's Play 2 actually impresses.

Child's Play 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Child's Play 2 and Child's Play 3 feature comparable DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless stereo tracks. Dialogue is generally clear, intelligible and competently prioritized, and air hiss, muffled lines and other irritations are the exception rather than the rule. The soundscape isn't over-crowded either, with effects and music given plenty of room to breathe. Granted, each film's sound design shows its age, but further remastering work couldn't accomplish much more, unless Universal went back to the original elements and creating new 5.1 remixes. All told, the sequels' lossless tracks are more than serviceable.

Child's Play 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Blu-ray edition of Child's Play 2 includes a standard definition theatrical trailer. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't even feature a main menu. It's pop-up menu or bust.

Child's Play 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are certainly worse horror sequels than Child's Play 2, a film whose greatest sins amount to being derivative, predictable and a bit too cheesy. Foster dad neck snaps, anyone? Universal's Blu-ray edition at least features an able bodied video presentation and a solid DTS-HD Master Audio stereo track. There aren't any new extras, or really any extras to speak of (grumble grumble), but as second-parters go, the film itself isn't half bad.