Seed of Chucky Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Seed of Chucky Blu-ray Movie Review

Raising hell, lowering standards...

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.

"I know I'm an orphan. I know I'm a freak. And, of course, I know that I'm Japanese."

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.)

And so we come to the silliest of them all: Seed of Chucky, for some the series' jump-the-shark installment, for others another jump-the-shark installment in a franchise full of 'em. In an initially amusing bit of meta-puppet theater, the fifth film follows Glen (voiced by Billy Boyd), the sweet-natured spawn of Chucky and Tiffany, whose disturbing murder-dreams send him on a desperate search for his parents, the dormant doll-bodies of whom he discovers on a Jennifer Tilly film set. Using a voodoo spell to bring the killer dolls back to life, kindly young Glen finds family life more challenging than he imagined. He eeks out one small victory, though: getting his parents to swear off killing... which lasts all of ten screen-minutes for dear ol' dad. What follows is weird heaped atop weird, with Chucky wanting to see his son follow in his footsteps, Tiffany itching for more children, and poor Glen trying to deal with the strange darkness swirling inside.

Still on screenwriting duties, Mancini takes a seat in the director's chair for the first time in Seed of Chucky, the last of the series' theatrical releases (and a successful one at that, more than doubling its financiers' investment at the box office). But while Bride of Chucky split franchise fans, Seed dismembers the faithful fold with a helter-skelter sequel so absurd it's funny. How much you'll laugh, though, depends entirely on how grotesque and dizzying you like your surreal horror. (It's no coincidence that master of the shock-n-schlock, John Waters, appears in the film.) There's very little sense to anything that happens, and even less sense to the inseminations, pregnancies, births and twisted brood Tiffany produces. Fortunately, Dourif is having a ball, ever the series' big draw; Boyd is perfect as the voice of Glen, stealing scenes wholesale from his Two Towers co-star; and Tilly is... well, I'm not actually sure what Tilly is doing, but it's akin to a highway pileup. Awful as it is, you're compelled to look. Ultimately, while Seed of Chucky comes dangerously close to Child's Play 3-levels of terrible, it's zig-zagging at least keeps things interesting. If you're a sucker for the truly bizarre macabre, that is.

Seed of Chucky Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky are cut from the same flawed DVD-era cloth, and their 1080p video transfers (the former VC-1 encoded, the latter AVC MPEG-4) suffer the same issues. Seed just suffers to a lesser degree than Bride. At first glance, the fourth and fifth films in the Chucky Collection offer visual leaps beyond their Child's Play trilogy predecesors. But look closer and you'll start to spot all the shortcomings. Digital manipulation is apparent throughout both presentations (with Bride's processing being more of a hindrance than Seed's), with some scenes being scrubbed within an inch of their lives. Worse, artificial sharpening is out in force, edge halos are prevalent and, every now and then, quite severe (more so in Seed for whatever reason), and the crispness that can seem so welcome sometimes becomes a curse when paired with smearing and ringing. Crush is also troubling, with the films' inky blacks draining shadows of detail and occasionally reducing delineation to the series' most mediocre. Add to that a pair of grain fields that haven't been completely wiped away yet prove to be more distracting than if they were -- Bride's grain resembles overcooked oatmeal, Seed's is better resolved -- and you have the two most ungainly transfers in the collection, as well as the two that are most in need of new masters. Considering the Child's Play films are much older than their Chucky sequels, such dated presentations comes as something of a surprise.

All is not lost, though. Colors lend punch to the sequels' palettes (despite the fact that Bride is cast almost entirely in electric blues); primaries are piercing, reds in particular; and skintones are relatively well-saturated, minus a handful of shots per film that feature flushed faces. Detail is also striking at times (the flip-side being that the best scenes make the worst scenes' eyesores stand out even more), and macroblocking, banding and other encoding anomalies are held at bay for the most part. Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky aren't complete disappointments -- again, Seed looks a bit better than Bride -- but they certainly aren't up to snuff. I'll take two new masters and proper high definition transfers, please.

Seed of Chucky Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Seed of Chucky serves up a dementedly playful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. The LFE channel has a taste for the kill, embracing Chucky's extracurriculars and bolstering each act of madness with strong low-end support. The rear speakers keep busy as well, with assertive directionality and a suitably eerie soundfield. More atmospheric scenes aren't as engaging as others, resulting in some rather front-heavy scenes, but there's enough sick slapstick and cutthroat comedy to keep things involving. Dialogue is clear and neatly prioritized too, although there are several buried lines, a few over-emphasized effects, and a handful of overwhelming music cues (admittedly inconsequential as each instance is). That said, the film's Looney Tunes sound design seems to be the culprit. Seed of Chucky's lossless audio fares well.

Seed of Chucky Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Unrated Cut: While the original theatrical version of Seed of Chucky is not included, the 87-minute unrated cut is. However, the unrated cut only features one alternate shot and a longer ending extended by one minute. Hardly unrated, hardly worth any excitement.
• Audio Commentaries: Writer/director Don Mancini hosts two audio commentaries -- the first with puppet master Tony Gardner, the second with actress Jennifer Tilly -- and both are worth a listen. The former mainly focuses on the film's puppets, craft, tone and visual effects, while the latter is more anecdotal and concerned with story, characters and performances.
• Conceiving the Seed of Chucky (SD, 19 minutes): A twenty-year retrospective with Chucky, Tiffany and Glen, who offer a tongue-in-cheek in-character look back over the series with legitimate interviews with Mancini, his fellow franchise producers and other talking heads.
• Slashed Scene (SD, 3 minutes): A lengthy deleted scene, with optional commentary with Mancini and actress Debbie Lee Carrington (who plays herself in the exorcised sequence).
• Fuzion Up Close with the Seed of Chucky Stars (SD, 4 minutes): Tilly, Tiffany and Chucky on TV.
• Heeeeere's Chucky (SD, 2 minutes): An in-character interview with Chucky.
• Family Hell-iday (SD, 4 minutes): Vacation slides with Chucky, Tiffany and Glen.
• Storyboard to Final Feature Comparison (SD, 14 minutes): Several storyboard-to-film comparisons.
• Tilly on The Tonight Show (SD, 2 minutes): A late night sketch for Jay Leno.
• Trailers (SD, 3 minutes): The film's teaser and theatrical trailers.

Seed of Chucky Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Seed of Chucky is more Child's Play 3 than the funnier, scarier or more ingenious sequel it longs to be, although its meta-puppet theater is good for a few laughs. It's bizarre solely for the sake of being bizarre, and it veers down stranger and stranger paths until it loses its way. The Blu-ray edition is largely hit or miss too, with a problematic video presentation, a solid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, and a decent supplemental package that's a bit too slapdash for it's own good.