Curse of Chucky

Curse of Chucky is a 2013 American supernatural slasher film, the sixth installment of the "Child's Play" franchise. The film was written and directed by Don Mancini, who created the franchise and wrote the first seven films. It stars Brad Dourif as Chucky and Fiona Dourif as Nica Pierce, as well as Danielle Bisutti, A Martinez and Brennan Elliott. The film grossed $3.8 million in DVD sales.
"Curse of Chucky" sees a return to the franchise's source material, bringing back the straightforward horror elements found in the first "Child's Play" film, as well as Chucky's classic appearance. The film, which went into production in September 2012, is the first direct-to-video installment of the series. In the U.S., it debuted via VOD on September 24, 2013, followed by a DVD and Blu-ray Disc release on October 8, 2013. The film was also turned into a scare zone for 2013's annual Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. Though "Curse of Chucky" was made with a direct-to-video release in mind, it was also seen theatrically in several countries, like Brazil. The film was followed by "Cult of Chucky" in 2017.
Plot.
In 2013 (twenty-five years after the first film and nine years after the fifth film), a Good-Guys doll calling itself Chucky mysteriously arrives in the mail at the home of paraplegic Nica Pierce and her mother Sarah. They live in an isolated house in a bad state of repair. Sarah is shown repeatedly painting pictures of the same flowers. Later that night, Sarah is found dead from a stab wound, and her death is ruled as a suicide. 
Later, Nica is visited by her sister Barb, accompanied by her husband Ian, their daughter Alice, live-in nanny Jill, and Father Frank. Alice finds Chucky and is allowed to keep him. That evening, while Alice and Nica are making chili, Chucky secretly pours rat poison into one of the dinner bowls. Father Frank eats the poison. After he leaves, he gets sick and ends up in a car accident that decapitates him. Officer Stanton later arrives to see the body. That night, Nica wonders where the doll came from and calls the package tracking center and is informed that it came from an evidence depository. She investigates Chucky on the internet and finds news articles about the murders tied to both the doll and Charles Lee Ray. 
Elsewhere, Chucky comes to life again and kicks a bucket of rainwater onto the floor's power outlets, electrocuting Jill and causing a blackout. Barb gets up to search for Alice. She goes to the attic, clutching Chucky all the time, and finds Sarah's large collection of paintings of the same flower. She finds a large knife inside Chucky's shirt and peels some of Chucky's fake skin, revealing the stitches created by his ex-girlfriend Tiffany in "Bride of Chucky". Chucky springs to life and stabs her in the eye with a kitchen knife. Nica hears Barb's scream but has to crawl up the stairs. Once upstairs, Nica discovers that Barb is dead and Chucky is alive. When Chucky flees, Nica wakes Ian up in a panic. Ian takes Nica to the garage but is unable to find Alice. He disarms Nica, believing her to be responsible for the murders.
Nica tries to explain that Chucky is alive, but Chucky acts like a lifeless doll when Ian looks at him. Ian decides to review the footage from a hidden camera that he planted on Chucky earlier (to get evidence of Barb's affair with Jill) and learns that Alice is locked in a closet and that Chucky truly is alive. Exposed, Chucky kills Ian by chopping off his lower jaw with a hatchet before he can act. Nica manages to break out of her restraints and avoids an axe to the chest by blocking it with her numb legs. The axe gets stuck, allowing Nica to stun Chucky into dropping the axe, and she pulls it out of her legs and beheads him. As Nica tries to cover her wound, Chucky reattaches his head as her attention lapses, and Chucky pushes Nica off her wheelchair and over a balcony onto the ground floor. 
When Nica asks why Chucky is doing this, he explains through flashbacks that as Charles Lee Ray, he was a friend of her family and in love with Sarah. Ray killed Nica's father and kidnapped Sarah while she was pregnant with Nica. Charles brings flowers to the kidnapped Sarah, which are the same sort of flowers that Sarah was shown compulsively painting. When Sarah betrayed him, he stabbed her in the stomach (which resulted in Nica being born paraplegic) and escaped. Ray's flight from the police ultimately led to his death as a human, which is why he came back to Sarah for revenge. 
Nica, after stalling by taunting him for his inability to kill his original nemesis Andy Barclay, manages to retreat into her elevator, disarm Chucky and plunge the dagger into his torso, which does not exactly kill him. Officer Stanton, the same officer who found Father Frank's body, arrives at the house, knowing that it's where Father Frank spent his last hours, and he sees Nica holding the bloody knife near Barb's body. A motionless Chucky watches from a nearby chair. Some time later, Nica is sent to a mental asylum for the criminally insane. Chucky is retained by the police as an exhibit for her trial. Officer Stanton gets in his car and sees Chucky breathing in the bag. Just before he opens the bag, Tiffany, who had been hiding in the backseat, slits his throat with a nail file. Tiffany collects Chucky and asks "Who's next?" before closing the bag. She later goes to a packaging center to ship him off to a new victim. 
Meanwhile, Alice, now living with her grandmother, comes home from school to find Chucky waiting for her. Chucky persuades Alice to play "Hide the Soul", and starts the infamous voodoo chant to transfer his soul into Alice's body. The grandmother, who Chucky has attacked but did not kill, sits up suddenly, suffocating in a plastic bag, during the chant. In a post-credits scene set six months later, Chucky, still in his doll body, is delivered to Andy, now an adult. When Andy turns his back to answer a phone call from his mother, Chucky cuts his way out of the package with a knife. Chucky looks around the house, only to have Andy pointing a shotgun at him. Andy tells Chucky "play with this", before shooting him in the head.
Production.
In an August 2008 interview, Don Mancini and David Kirschner spoke of a planned reboot of the "Chucky" franchise, to be written and directed by Mancini. They described their choice of a remake over a sequel as a response to the will of the fans, who "want to see a scary Chucky movie again... to go back to the straightforward horror rather than the horror comedy." They indicated that Brad Dourif would return as the voice of Chucky.
In a subsequent interview, Mancini described the remake as a darker and scarier retelling of the original film, but one that, while having new twists and turns, would not stray too far from the original concept. At a 2009 horror convention, Dourif confirmed his role in the remake. At a reunion panel at the Mad Monster Party horror and sci-fi convention, the cast and crew from the original film confirmed that both a remake and a spin-off are in development. Writer Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner worked on a sequel then titled "Revenge of Chucky".
In June 2012, it was confirmed that a sequel would indeed enter production, entitled "Curse of Chucky", and intended for a direct-to-video release.
Filming.
The film began production in early September 2012 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, which ended in mid-October. In November 2012, Don Mancini announced that filming for "Curse of Chucky" had been completed, and a release was set for around Halloween 2013.
Release and marketing.
In May 2013, Fiona Dourif released the first image of Chucky in the film through her Instagram. The image is from the film's soundtrack cover, and shows Chucky looking more like the doll from the first three films than the previous two. The official trailer was released on July 8, 2013. The film's official Red band trailer was released August 1, 2013. "Curse of Chucky" had its world premiere on August 2, 2013, at the Fantasia Festival, in Montreal, and its European premiere at the London FrightFest Film Festival on August 22, 2013, accompanied by screenings of the original trilogy of "Child's Play" films. The DVD/Blu-ray was released on October 8, 2013 and domestically grossed $3,821,602 in the first month.
Reception.
Based on 21 reviews, the film currently holds a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 6.17 out of 10. The site's critics consensus states: "The franchise hex of disappointing sequels is broken by going back to basics in this chilling entry, restoring a sense of playfulness to the Chucky saga."
An early review posted on "Bloody Disgusting" on August 2, 2013, was very favorable of the film. In it, Brad Miska stated, ""Curse of Chucky" may just be the best home video sequel since "". It's alarmingly good, which puts pressure on Universal to answer as to why they didn't let Mancini shoot this for theaters." He continued to say, "Chucky fans should rejoice... "Curse of Chucky" is clearly going to re-ignite the franchise for years to come." Ryan Larson of Shock Till You Drop also wrote a mostly positive review, saying, "the movie does so much right that it's easy to overlook the very few flaws it has. The pacing and writing coincide to create a fun blood-soaked jaunt that never gets boring or dull." He goes on to praise the director, pointing out that "Mancini (pulling double duty as writer as well as director) does a great job at introducing and ushering off characters in a fashion that doesn't bog the film down with a bunch of characters who get three minutes of film time before getting the axe, or butcher knife in this case. The kills are kitschy, but in the best way possible, waxing nostalgic of the slasher films of the late eighties and early nineties."
At the film's world premiere at the Montreal Fantasia Festival, it received a Gold Award for Best International Feature.
Accolades.
The film received a nomination for Best DVD or Blu-ray Release at the 40th Saturn Awards.
Halloween Horror Nights.
"Curse of Chucky" received its own scarezone at the 2013 lineup of Universal Studios Hollywood's "Halloween Horror Nights".
Chucky had previously been featured at "Halloween Horror Nights". In 2009, the franchise received its own maze, entitled "Chucky's Fun House", in Hollywood, a seasonal re-themeing of Universal Studios Hollywood's year-round attraction Universal's House of Horrors, and "Chucky: Friends Till the End" at Universal Studios Florida, themed around the Good Guys factory, with scenes featuring Chucky and other childhood toys gone bad. Since 1992, Chucky has starred in his own shows Hollywood, "Chucky's In-Your-Face Insults" and "Chucky's Insult Emporium". In 2010, Chucky was featured in the "20 Years of Fear" scarezone in Florida.
Sequels.
The film was followed by "Cult of Chucky" in 2017, and the TV series Chucky in 2021.