Child’s Play 3

When we last left our eight-year-old hero Andy, it was 1990. Now it’s 1991, and our hero is 16 years old.

No references are made to the year, and when the movie opens we get to see the Good Guys factory which, it seems, has been gathering dust for the last year. Sorry, eight years. Because as we all know, if a business stops manufacturing something, they allow the space to lay unused until they start manufacturing it again, no matter how long the warehouse must lay fallow.

(Though if it’s been 8 years, that makes it… (does math) 1998. Which is when part IV came out. Huh.)

And of course, the first thing that happens is, someone dunks the huge wad of plastic formerly known as Chucky that (again!) wasn’t use as police evidence and (again!) melts it down, even though there was clothing and other things attached to it… which you would think would clog the plastic vats, but never mind.

Either way, somehow, it’s implied that Chucky’s blood creates a new Chucky. Why not, say, many Chuckys? Or many dolls that Chucky could inhabit? Because how awesome would that be, with Chucky jumping from body to body, almost impossible to catch or kill?

At any rate, the factory is back open for business, and the first Good Guy doll off the assembly line has been handed off to the evil, evil, corporate head who has no problem bringing back the doll of everyone’s nightmares.

He’s the first one dead. In case you hadn’t guessed. Worth mentioning: Chucky reveals himself as alive to this guy, which should mean he’s the dude who’s up for possession this time.

Or maybe not. Who knows? We’ll come back to the body-hopping shortly.

Back to Andy, who has had some trouble fitting in with various foster parents, because his mom is still undergoing treatment. Or something. One would think that after ten years, someone would either figure out that mom really was attacked by a killer doll, especially since her son would have had to admit that it happened twice, or mom would have finally just given up and said, “Well, okay, it didn’t happen,” and there would have been a family reunion.

Either way.

But, instead, we’ve got Andy being placed in military school.

Here’s a question. What happened to Kyle, who was also menaced by Chucky eight years ago? She’s never spoken of, even though she and Andy shared night of terror together. One would think he’d at least shoot her a letter.

Okay, I swear. That’s going to be the last logic flaw I talk about for at least three paragraphs.

The head of the school decides to take Andy on, despite his troubled past. And Andy goes and gets himself a military haircut. There’s a running gag about the barber enjoying his work just way too much, but it’s not worth your time or mine to get invested in his fate. He’s not making it out of the movie.

Instead, let’s focus on the commercial that runs while Andy is getting his regulation military haircut. It’s the exact same footage we saw that young Andy once referred to as a rerun, only this time it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a commercial. It’s in this manner that Andy finds out that Good Guy dolls are back on the market.

Also important in this scene is a young child named Tyler, who, despite the fact that he looks like he’s about ten, and he owns a pretty impressive handheld gaming system he’s always carrying around with him, and he’s black, is very, very, very, impressed by a toy that’s white, is a doll, and only says three sentences.

Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t say it was a logic flaw. I mean, I am now, because this is the fourth paragraph, but I didn’t say it in the last paragraph. So I didn’t break my promise.

Other characters are introduced. Whitehurst, who is a geeky male. De Silva, who is an attractive and spunky female. Shelton, who is evil and power-hungry. We know this because he forces Whitehurst to polish his shoes, and because he’s mean to people. In a very military sort of way.

And with that, all the major players are in place, and the story is ready to rock and roll. Only it doesn’t.

Chucky ships himself to Andy in brown paper wrapping, an ingenious plan that would have worked if not for a meddling kid. In this case, the kid is Tyler, who accidentally drops the package he’s supposed to take to Andy. He then realizes it’s a Good Guy doll, and decides to steal the doll and keep it for himself instead.

There’s an important moral here – don’t steal your friend’s stuff, or a possessed doll will try to hide his soul inside you. Don’t forget that, kids. And stay in school.

Tyler discovers that Chucky is some sort of alive, and Chucky figures that since he has a new body, then technically he should be able to cram his shopworn soul into this new first person he revealed himself to. So Chucky tells Tyler he wants to play a game called “Hide the soul,” and Tyler decides to comply.

Only the head of the military school shows up in a nick of time, and takes the doll away from Tyler. He then stuffs it in the trash.

The trash is collected by a friendly garbage man, who hears yelling in the back of his truck. He races inside the back of his truck, attempting to save whoever is trapped there, and Chucky sneaks to the front of the truck and crushes the guy.

Aaand it’s filler time.

I’ll explain: From this point on, events occur, but it’s pretty obvious that everyone is just going through the motions until we reach the dramatic conclusion. No new information is revealed, no setups really pay off, and ultimately a few people die because killing someone every few minutes creates plot churn.

So we’ll race through the events.

Chucky locates Andy, and announces both his evil plans and his intention to kill Andy now that he no longer needs Andy’s body.

Shelton shows up at the last minute and takes Chucky away from Andy.

Andy tries to steal Chucky back, and Chucky runs away. Then Chucky plays a game of hide-and-go-seek with Tyler, while De Silva and one of her friends sneak into the school office to find out more about Andy.

Everyone is almost caught in the school head’s office, only they aren’t. The head of the school discovers that Chucky is alive and dies of a heart attack.

Andy tells Tyler that Chucky is evil.

Whitehurst gets a hair cut. (This is an actual plot point.)

The crazy barber finds Chucky in one of his cabinets, and decides to give the doll a haircut.

Chucky kills the barber. Whitehurst, thanks to his recent haircut, is witness to the aftermath. And also a living killer doll (I told you the haircut was important!).

Whitehurst opts to not tell anyone what he saw, and everyone troops off to the annual war games, which involves a bunch of co-ed teenagers in the woods carrying rifles with paint bullets instead of real bullets.

Chucky, of course, swaps a few paint shells for real shells. Because he’s evil. And also not concerned that Tyler might take a shot to the chest, leaving Chucky trapped in a doll body.

At this point, of course, we head into the big battle… No. Wait. Sorry about that. There’s some more plot. We’ll zip through that too.

Chucky grabs Tyler. A grenade is thrown. Whitehurst jumps on it to save everyone. Shelton is shot and dies.

Then the remaining players all run down what looks like a really steep hill so that the final fight can take place in a scary amusement park ride.

Is it worth getting into the nitty and the gritty of what happens? Probably not. It’s more or less the same as the climatic battle from part two, only this time Andy is the older of the two kids.

In the end, Chucky is dropped into a massive fan and chopped into little pieces, never to return again.

And with that, the movie ends, instead of concluding with three living witnesses once again saying, “Um, okay, it’s happened three times now. There really is a killer doll. Look, his parts are scattered all over the place…”