Review of Child's Play 2 (1990) by Allan C — 16 Dec 2016

Entertaining but less effective sequel to the surprisingly good original "Child's Play." The original film's screenwriter, Don Mancini, returns to write this sequel as he would for all of the subsequent Child's Play and Chucky films, but this entry seems less original than the first and is much more of a standard slasher film story of a seemingly unstoppable killer leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

The difference here is that the unstoppable killer is a diminutive little red headed doll viciously voiced by the great Brad Dourif. The voice performance by Dourif does enliven the character and really does carry the film as the nasty little doll does a series of horrible things to poor Andy, who he terrorized in the original film and tries unsuccessfully again to possess.

In this film, Andy is put into a foster home where he's helped by a teen girl, Christine Elise, fight off Chucky. Elise looked really familiar to me, but I didn't recognizer much on her filmography that I'd seen, though what I realized later was that she looks totally like a 1980s version Kristen Stewart.

But overall, this film is rather weak despite a decent cast that also includes Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham (who will always be Beef from "The Phantom of the Paradise" for me) as the foster parents and Grace Zabriskie as one of the many hapless victims.

This franchise didn't really didn't come back to life until "Bride of Chucky" when the film decided to embrace it's campy concept, which there are some foreshadowings of during this film's finale in a toy factory, which is the highlight of this film.