As Chucky’s third season forges toward its midway point with the frenzied ferocity of a killer doll with aging issues, we find the show hitting a couple of significant milestones.
The first is that it’s time for the now-customary halloween episode which always sees our ginger-haired horror icon try to step things up a notch, but the second aspect is something entirely new to the world of voodoo powered dolls – a mid-season finale.
That’s right, thanks to the multiple strikes affecting Hollywood right now, we’re only getting the first half of season 3 with the second following sometime in the new year which means that Don Mancini and co. needs to deliver something memorable in order to tide any Chuckleheads (my unofficial term for Chucky fanatics) over until 2024.
The setting is in place, Chucky is primed, some cameos are prepped and the franchise’s not-so secret weapon – Jennifer Tilly – is set to sweep onto centre stage once more; but will it be enough to keep us locked in while the second half writhes in limbo.
Whether it makes sense from a security standpoint or not, President Collins’ charity Halloween party at the White House is in full swing and certain invited guests are ready to put their various end games into action. Sinister CIA agent Pryce, in league with reluctant First Lady Charlotte Collins, is using the do to weed out the serial killer that’s brazenly claimed no less than three victims within the walls of the White House to date, while long time Chucky hunters Jake, Lexi and Devon have scored invites thanks to the President’s oldest son, Henry, and are hoping to finally get answers confirming the whereabouts of Lexi’s sister Caroline and eradicate the last Good Guy once and for all. However, ever the overachieving schemer, Chucky has plans for all of them and hopes to reverse his advanced aging by appeasing voodoo god Damballa with the deaths of at least three more people – guess who he’s got in mind…
Meanwhile, while Chucky scampers around the White House clad in a Phantom of the Opera costume while freaking out the President with memories of his dead son, Joseph, we also check in with Tiffany Valentine who is currently incarcerated in a Texan prison, awaiting execution for her crimes. Never one to see the gloom in a bad situation, Tiff (who everyone still thinks is Jennifer Tilly) experiences hostility from everyone from the guards to another murderous, imprisoned celebrity, TV chef Evelyn Elliot, but the femme fatale has a plan and it involves manipulating the entire staff of the facility with a clutch of voodoo dolls she has stashed in her personal effects.
With all these different plans unfolding at the same time, who will be successful and who will fall victim on this latest Halloween?
In some ways, this mid-season break is something of a good thing, because going into this episode knowing that this is the last Chucky we’ll get for a while means that expectation is at a high and the epidode actually manages to pull it off, however, there’s a good chance it won’t be for the reasons you’d expect. As a whole, we’ve reached one of those episodes where Jake, Lexi and Devon have put a plan into action only to find that Chucky’s counter plan is way more nastier than they ever could have imagined, but despite the anticipation of what could occur, its once again the maniacal show stealing of Jennifer Tilly that proves to be the most fun.
That’s not to say the Chucky stuff underachives. In fact season 3 so far has seen some of the best production values the show’s seen to date and the expansive White House Halloween party gives the episode a lush and expansive canvas to play with before Chucky spectacularly fucks up everybody’s night. Chucky mastermind, Don Mancini, gas always revered the horror classics (remember, Tiffany was first resurrected while Bride Of Frankenstein played on TV) and here he has Chucky spend the whole episode dressed as the Phantom Of The Opera and even has his ultimate plan to be to drop a chandelier on a crowd of guests at the opportune moment. It not only is a great image, but as Chucky is dressed exactly how the President’s dead son was last Halloween, Devon Sawa’s POTUS is obviously starting to have his lines blurred almost as much as his other young son, Henry, has.
However, it soon becomes apparent that Jake, Lexi and Devon’s plans for vanquishing Chucky pretty much stop at “gaining access to the White House” and it’s a bit weird that three veteran Chucky foes would leave themselves so vunerable after everything they’ve been through – however, their Chucky inspired Halloween costumes are fucking resplendent if a little illogical. It’s not like Nancy Thompson is in a rush to pull on a red and green sweater after one of her entanglements with Freddy Krueger and Chucky is responsible for the murder of every single one of their parents, so….
However, responsible for yet another grand theft episode is Jennifer Tilly who now returns with her new character arc with renewed vigour and while we’ve seen the actress do some crazy shit on the show before, this may genuinely be her greatest episode yet. In fact, watching her acclimate to prison with the aid of a bunch of will-sapping voodoo dolls is so much fun, I honestly believe you could get a Tiffany spin-off series from it. If this wasn’t fun enough, this section of the episode gives us one of two, notable cameos that occur, with My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Vardalos portraying a fellow inmate who fatally irks our blonde bombshell (“Bullets Over Broadway was a piece of shit!”). In fact, her gruesomely drawn-out bout of self-mutilation at the hands of Damballa may be one of the crowning highlights of the entire season so far – I mean, it’s not every day you get to watch an Academy Award nominated actress skin her own fingers with a potato peeler… By the way, that other cameo is Saturday Night Live’s Sarah Sherman who not only memorably portrayed the killer doll in a skit last year, but is the second SNL alumni in two episodes after Keenan Thompson to get messily annihilated in spectacular fashion.
A tantalising pause in a season that’s thus far brought the goods, there’s still a ways to go with numerous threads left dangling with tension hanging in the air like a bloody mist, but with the main being Chucky’s aging leaving him looking like a podling from The Dark Crystal, pray to Damballa that the second half comes sooner rather than later.
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