In the previous film, Child’s Play 3, Chucky died for the third time. Well, we all know that slasher villains never truly stay dead, they are always resurrected in some way or other. This time, his ex-girlfriend Tiffany Valentine bribes a police officer so she can get her hands on the Chucky doll’s remains. She of course murders this guy afterwards. In her trailer (because where else would she live) she stitches the doll up and performs a voodoo ritual to revive him. Aaaand…nothing happens. Botched ritual…or perhaps a delayed delivery? Hmm. In the meantime she gets a visit from a dude named Damien who is madly in love with her, and voila, there’s life in the old doll after all and we get the first kill.
While Tiffany is at first very happy about having her love brought back to life, she soon finds out that he was never really that serious with her after all. What a surprise. She gets angry, and locks him inside a playpen while giving him a bride doll to taunt him. Uh-oh…bad idea. Chucky electrocutes her and uses a voodoo spell to transfer her soul into the bride doll. It’s supposed to be an act of vengeance, but at the same time…he got himself a female counterpart. A Harley to his Joker or something like that. They also kinda fall in love with each other all over again, and they certainly seem to be a perfect duo. Now, we have two killer dolls who want to escape their doll bodies, by finding some humans they can switch with, and they end up choosing Tiffany’s neighbor boy Jesse and his girlfriend Jade.
Bride of Chucky is the fourth film in the Child’s Play/Chucky franchise, and the first to use his name in the title. It was once again written by Don Mancini, and this time directed by Ronny Yu. And this is also where the franchise really swerves into a completely different lane, where it’s pure comedy almost to the point of being self-parodic. And to be honest…I kinda liked this turn, as the shift fits with the goofy foul-mouthed doll who was never really scary to begin with (my opinion). And no matter the reception, it became the highest-grossing film in the series.
Kevin Yahger and his team created many animatronic puppets for this film, where Chucky alone had nine different ones, and each doll required seven puppeteers to control. And yeah, we’re going for practical effects, which of course look great. The acting is actually pretty good too, with Dourif naturally returning as Chucky, but Jennifer Tilly also does a very fun performance as his unhinged and slightly cute-naive girlfriend. Her doll version looks great, a perfect counterpart to Chucky and just as full of life and character as he is. Their love-hate relationship comes off as both cute and funny, and the kill scenes are considerably more gory this time around. The only thing that falls a little flat are the two human characters, Jesse and Jade, who become totally uninteresting compared to the rest, but fortunately the majority of the film delivers on doll action and kills.
Bride of Chucky is, just as Mancini himself said: part horror, part comedy, part romance and part road movie. And it is a such a fun time! It doesn’t take itself seriously for even a split second, it knows exactly what it is. And that ending…yeah, that’s certainly something. Which of course gave the perfect idea for the next film, since obviously they decided to say “fuck it, let’s just have a ton of fun at this point and go even more off the rails“.
Director: Ronny Yu
Writer: Don Mancini
Country & year: USA, 1998
Actors: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile, Alexis Arquette, Gordon Michael Woolvett, John Ritter, Lawrence Dane, Michael Louis Johnson, James Gallanders
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144120/
