Bride of Chucky

Bride of Chucky takes a big shift in tone from flicks 1, 2, and 3. The first was straight-up horror. The second and third were horror movies with a bad guy who liked to throw out one-liners from time to time.

But Bride of Chucky isn’t a horror movie. Or if it was meant to be, it pretty much fails, because it isn’t scary or suspenseful.

Instead, what we have here is a black comedy of sorts, wherein Chucky and his bride hitch a ride to New Jersey with a boy (Jesse) and a girl (Jade) who could be in an entirely different movie for roughly the first hour of the film.

A movie where sometimes things blow up around them for no reason and each thinks the other is a killer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Part IV: The Chuckening, starts with a cop taking the evidence bag that has Chucky’s remaining parts in it. I guess the plan is that he’s going to sell it to Tiffany, but instead Tiffany cuts his throat.

Tiffany, by the way, was Charles Lee Ray’s girlfriend, back in Chicago at the time of his death. No, we’ve never heard of her until this moment.

She, on the other hand, has been thinking about Chucky for years, and she has secured all of his plastic parts in an effort to bring him back to life so they can be together forever. She sews him up and brings him back using “Voodoo for Dummies,” which is one of things you’ll either find funny, or not. And if you’re laughing, well, then this movie was made for you.

I could jump back and forth between this plotline and the story of Jade and Jesse, but that would just confuse things. We’ll come back to the two Js in a bit.

It turns out that Tiffany has been wearing the ring Chucky was going to give to her back when he got killed, only it turns out that she’s been wearing the rock for ten years for no reason. He just took it off some lady he killed, and was going to pawn it.

This makes Tiffany sad, and she responds to these feelings by locking Chucky up in a baby cage/playpen (honestly, I have no idea what it was really meant to be) and giving him a doll as a bride.

Chucky, who is now REALLY not happy, escapes from his cage and electrocutes Tiffany in her own bathtub. Then he brings her back to life in the doll bride.

To teach her a lesson, I guess.

At this juncture Chucky explains that in order to get into human bodies, they need an amulet that his human body was buried with.

This of course, makes nooo sense in the context of the first trio of movies, in at least three ways.

First: Charles Lee Ray is buried in New Jersey. Except he was shot and killed in Chicago, so how that did happen?

Second: Did Chucky just figure out how important the amulet is/was? And if so, did he find this out by reading “Voodoo for Dummies?”

Third: No mention is made of the fact that they need to get out of their plastic bodies as soon as possible. So maybe they have all the time in the world if the amulet is involved?

This last point removes pretty much any and all possible tension from the movie. Unless you’re really invested in the teenage lovebirds, the only possible suspense you might have is whether or not Chucky and Tiffany will get to the amulet before they become trapped in their bodies forever. But I guess that’s not a concern.

At any rate, what happens is, Tiffany calls up Jesse and tells him there’s 1,000 bucks in it for him if he takes two dolls to the cemetery as fast as possible.

Okay, so, let’s zip back to the other plotline.

That plotline story Jesse, Jade, and a guy named David. David is gay, which I guess I wouldn’t mention except the movie feels compelled to bring it up a time or three. I suppose the flick might be trying to make a point about how his gayness doesn’t affect his character arc, and how it’s just a facet of his personality, but instead it ends up being sort of weirdly distracting. Usually if you bring up information like that, it’s important, but in this case, it’s just there.

Jesse loves Jade, but he lives in a trailer. Jade’s parents are dead, and she lives with her uncle, who doesn’t approve of Jesse. Because of the trailer. Or something. Regardless, he’s a mean guy who doesn’t like Jesse.

Jesse wants to be with Jade forever and ever, so when he figures they can get their hands on a grand, he tells Jade they should run away and get married.

She agrees to this.

Unfortunately, as she’s agreeing to this, and packing, Jade’s uncle gets a bunch of nails shoved into his face by Chucky and Tiffany and then gets stuffed into a bench in Jesse’s van.

Jesse and Jade’s problems continue when they’re pulled over by a cop they had a previous run-in with. Jade’s cop uncle has been paying a cop flunky to hassle Jesse and Jade. Unfortunately for flunky cop, Chucky doesn’t want any delays, and Chucky blows up the flunky’s car. With the flunky in it.

So Jesse and Jade run. To an all-night chapel. Where they get married.

At which point a random couple comes bursting into their honeymoon suite and steals Jesse’s money.

Chucky and Tiffany are displeased at this turn of events, and see to it that the random couple doesn’t make it through the next scene alive. Happy to be killing together again, Chucky and Tiffany have a honeymoon of their own, which means exactly what you think it does.

Meanwhile, Jade and Jesse grab separate phones and tell their buddy David that, like, they both totally got married to a killer! I’d like to think that if the movie was made a little more recently they would have texted this information (MRD JD – SHE Z KLR. HLP). As it is, Jesse has to find a pay phone. He’d still be searching for one if the movie was made in the last five years.

David drives to their hotel and startles the happy couple. Then he gets into their van and joins them on their Jersey trip. Only the van smells bad, because there’s a dead body in it.

David finds the dead uncle, the van is pulled over, Chucky and Tiffany pull out guns, David steps onto the highway and is hit by a truck.

Chucky decides, in voiceover, that the van is too easy to find now, and so the next time we see Jesse driving, they’re all in a Winnebago.

At this point, the cards are pretty much on the table, and Chucky and Tiffany have spelled out their plan of taking over Jade and Jesse’s bodies. So Jade and Jesse make some remarks designed to cause a marital spat.

Angry words are exchanged, and Jesse crashes the Winnebago.

Which explodes.

It’s some gasoline/power cable thing, but ultimately it doesn’t come to much because everyone survives and ends up at Charles Lee Ray’s grave site.

Despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night, a coroner is digging up Ray’s body, because the police found Charles Lee Ray’s fingerprints at two of the crime scenes shown previously in this film.

Which means that, yes, Chucky has Charles’s fingerprints. The implications of this are pretty interesting, but if you’ve been reading along so far, you are well aware that this idea will never be discussed again.

Ever. Put it out of your mind. Forget I mentioned it.

(Don’t stop to think about all the other murders in the previous three films, and about how Chucky’s fingerprints would be on those as well.)

Standoffs happen. Chucky and Tiffany fight each other with shovels. Tiffany is killed.

Chucky ends up in the bottom of Charles’s grave, and he can’t get out because he’s two feet tall.

A cop, who we’ve seen a few times on the TV talking about Jesse and Jade, shows up, sees that yes, Chucky is alive… and then Jade shoots Chucky. Chucky dies.

Jade and Jesse wander off into the sunset.

And the cop goes over and pokes Tiffany. She responds by giving birth to a doll with sharp, pointy teeth, which then leaps for the cop’s throat.

There are some interesting implications here. Jesse and Jade’s one reliable police-force witness is probably now quite deceased. Which means that our two lovebirds are probably going to the clink for a long, long time. Plus, of course, we’ve got the upcoming “Seed of Chucky,” so we know that the baby will not be forgotten in the next installment.

Plus we’ve got the Duex Ex Machina, er, sorry, the amulet floating around now. So many wild possibilities! So many possible twists and turns!

Although I think what we really need now is a movie where all the survivors team up to put a stop to Chucky once and for all. I mean, Andy has military training now. How hard could it be to spring his mom? After that, all they need is an arc welder and a lot of free time.