DVD review: Cult of Chucky

On our recent holiday to New York City, I picked up the DVD of the latest Child's Play/Chucky movie. Already the 7th in the series, Cult of Chucky. I knew it just had been released in the U.S. so I was kinda lucky since in Europe it hadn't been released yet. To be honest, I didn't have the greatest expectations of this film, but I want to keep my Chucky collection complete. I love the Chucky franchise very much. But the last two films, Seed of Chucky and Curse of Chucky, I thought were just plain terrible. Especially the first 3 films are just classics and Bride of Chucky was also pretty decent I think. But for some reason, I still couldn't wait to see Cult of Chucky, so when we got home the first movie we watched was this one.

The movie has some familiar faces in it if you've seen the previous film. Fiona Dourif reprises her role as Nica from Curse of Chucky, Alex Vincent also makes a return as Andy (he played the kid in the first 2 films), Jennifer Tilly is also back playing herself and Tiffany, and Brad Dourif does the awesome voice of Chucky again.

The Story picks up after Curse of Chucky. Nica is sent to an asylum because she gets blamed for all the murders that were committed in Curse of Chucky. Of course, no one believes, that a Good Guy doll would have murdered all these people. Meanwhile, Andy is trying to find Nica since he is the only one who does believe her. Since he has been through it all before. During one of Nica's group therapy sessions, her psychiatrist brings her a Good Guy doll. And we all know what happens next, haha.

So the story of Cult of Chucky is pretty straightforward it seems. But has a bit more to it than this, but I didn't want to include any spoilers in this review. So to know what I'm talking about I guess you have to watch this film yourself. All I can say is that I kinda like the twist they did. It is something new and fresh, although maybe not the best idea.

Overall I think Cult of Chucky is actually pretty decent. I mean it's not a classic like any of the first 3 films. But it wasn't nearly as bad as Seed or Curse. So with that being said, it was way better than I expected. There were just some ideas that I didn't like and there were just some things that just that didn't make any sense at all. It was nice to see the return of some of the cast. And I think all of them did an excellent job. I liked the character of Nica way better than I did in Curse. And again Chucky himself is just plain awesome. Brad Dourif always delivers an excellent performance as Chucky. The overall tone of the film is pretty dark and only Chucky brings some humor to the table. Also, there weren't too many really dumb or annoying characters in there, so I guess that's rather positive haha. I also love the setting in the asylum,  although it is also a bit of a cliché for a horror movie setting.

So I won't spoil any of the kills for you guys either. But I just wanted to mention that there a decent amount of them. And there are some awesome kills in there, although some were a bit too much over the top for me. But they used mostly practical effects, which is a huge plus for me. And I have to say that did an excellent job with these effects. There are some very gory scenes in this film. There was some use of CGI, but luckily it seemed to be kept at a minimum. I didn't feel that the film had any real dull moments in it. The overall pacing was pretty good.

The DVD I bought is released by Universal and is region 1. I don't think there are any other versions out there yet, with the exception of the Blu-Ray complete 7 movie collection. The sound and picture quality on this DVD is really good. And the movie doesn't have this straight to DVD movie quality. The DVD contains 2 versions of the film. The unrated version and the R rated version. I don't know why the hell they want to include the R rated version on it. But I guess someone out there will watch it. I also think it's really awesome that the DVD has quite a few extras on it. It does feature some deleted scenes. Which is not too interesting and most of these were cut for obvious reasons. But I still think it's nice that they did include them on this DVD as extras. It also has a short behind the scenes/making of documentary on it. It is about 5 minutes long and has some of the cast and crew talk about the film. And you see some cool behind the scenes shots. There is another 5 minutes documentary on it called Good Guy Gone Bad. It shows how they make Chucky come to life on screen. Which is really interesting. There is some much work that goes into it. It's so good to see that they didn't take the CGI route with this. There is another bonus feature called The Dollhouse. This one talks about the families of the cast and crew and how Chucky affected their lives. You can also watch the entire film with commentary from director Don Mancini and head puppeteer Tony Gardner.

I would recommend this DVD if you are a fan of the franchise. Although it's not the best in the series. I think it's a nice addition to the series. And I think it's good that they are keeping this franchise alive. It's too bad this one went straight to DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital. I would have loved to see it in theaters.  If you don't want to buy this now but want to see it first, you can watch it on Netflix (USA). But just beware: Netflix only offers the R rated version. So if you want to see it completely uncut (which I hope you do) I would recommend picking up the DVD or Blu-Ray.