Design Flaw: Child's Play (2019)
My dear readers, I am thrilled to report that October has finally arrived! It is a most exciting time, as this is the date of our second anniversary and the official commencement of the witching season! My sweet Penny Dee and I like to get a bit of a leg up on decorating and so we decided to bedeck our dwelling with Halloween fare around mid-July. Though we have a permanent collection of tchotchkes and festive relics that we annually excavate from the attic, we are also ardent supporters of acquiring new Halloween items in a resourceful and environmentally conscious fashion. We construct bats and spiderwebs from recycled paper and we use old pieces of aluminum foil to craft fantastical shapes. There is also a nearby medical waste facility that is not particularly well guarded and while much of their output is not what one might call display quality, some of the more solid pieces make for a spooky bit of fun for the children when they spy them draped across the trees lining our walkway. It is truly a wonderful season.
Despite the focus on mass-produced presents, Child’s Play also includes handcrafted gifts
Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza) is also an admirable supporter of salvaging old and forgotten materials. Her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) is very much enamored with the Buddi, a child’s doll enabled with “smart” technology, capable of entertaining a wee young thing with both reasonably intelligent conversation and its ability to switch on the television. Such fancy devices are usually out of reach for a single parent like Karen, as her modest salary at a chain retail establishment does not allow for any extraordinary indulgences. But her store’s policy regarding damaged returns puts her in contact with a doll bound for a trash compactor, which she deftly manages to secure from a fellow employee with some light banter and blackmail. Fresh from this victory over unnecessary waste, she presents this special gift to Andy, an ungrateful little snot of a boy who is not at all happy with the refurbished and slightly outdated model his mother presents.
But Andy overcomes his disgust once it becomes clear that this particular Buddi doll possesses unique properties. After naming itself Chucky (Mark Hamill), the doll soon proves he will do anything Andy commands him to do, even if the request involves activities that are age inappropriate or hazardous to adults. The two have all sorts of fun spooking his mother’s boyfriend and amusing his new chums -- so much fun, in fact, that Andy blithely ignores Chucky’s alarmingly codependent tendencies. But a few awkward misunderstandings about boundaries and sharp implements cause Andy to sever their relations in a sudden and somewhat brash manner. Chucky, who has few other friends to speak of, is most distraught over the whole episode and eventually employs his distinctive lack of safety features to terrorize Andy and those closest to him.
Eventually Andy finds all dolls unbearable
In their quite thorough reimagining of Tom Holland’s original tale, the makers of this sleek new Child’s Play have cleverly adopted the story to our current state of technological anxiety, demonstrating how our own efforts to replicate human-like intelligence in computers might result in mutinous gadgetry. In this case, the doll’s disobedience is made possible by an incensed factory worker who disarms Chucky’s various safety protocols, including his “violence inhibitors.” It is a frightening thought, to be sure, but rather than merely echoing the concerns others have expressed about monkeying around with electronic sentience, the filmmakers behind this modernized slasher have, in their own subtle way, suggested a solution -- simply avoid programming our devices with violence in the first place. Whether it be a children’s toy, a self-piloting automobile or a throng of robotic servants, instilling savage tendencies may not actually be as necessary as we once thought. It is positively reassuring to discover that path to resolving one of our vexing modern problems is as is straightforward as the one proposed by this fine film.
Child’s Play runs 90 minutes and is rated R for bloody horror violence and language throughout.
