So, how exactly do you top killing the President Of The United States? In Chucky’s last episode, the notoriously batshit show firmly established its return after that pesky hiatus by placing the dying Charles Lee Ray in the midst of such questionable company as John Wilks Booth after he murdered Devon Sawa’s President Collins by pulling his damn eyes clean out of his head. Not only was it a bold statement (it’s not every day you watch a world leader get assassinated by a killer doll), but it led us into the season’s second half that apparently will see Chucky making a play for the big enchilada – the White House’s situation room with some launch codes stuffed in his little plastic mitts.
However, Chucky isn’t the sort of show to kick off its climax three episodes early, and while mutually assured destruction is as big as it gets, for the devil doll’s creator, Don Mancini, it’s only an appetizer for crazier shit.
Over to you, Chuckster.
After his pep talk from Tiffany, an aging, dying Chucky figures that if he’s going out, he’s going out in a blaze of glory that’ll take as many people with him when he goes. So after messily murdering President Collins and swiping the nuclear codes from his eyeless corpse, Chucky is dead set on getting to that big red button and making his mark on the planet. However, before he does, the rest of the cast have to do their little danvers first and the main focus of Panic Room is the growing stress and paranoia that is buffering the sanity of beleaguered First Lady Charlotte Collins. After multiple episodes of her and the ruthless Agent Pryce clearing up after the murders of a “mystery” serial killer plaguing the White House in the interests of national security, the death of her husband proves to be the last straw. However, to her horror, Pryce seems to have contingency for everything, wheeling in presidential lookalike Randall Jenkins (yet another role for the constantly resurrecting Devon Sawa) to take the President’s place as if nothing has happened.
However, while Charlotte is stuck in an endless nightmare partially of her own making, wannabe Chucky-Busters Jake, Devon and Lexi try yet another attempt to infiltrate the White House via Lexi’s continued interest in Grant Collins but their arrival may be the exact audience Chucky desires as he puts his plan in motion with the unwilling help of young Henry Collins and a confused-as-Hell Jenkins, his enemies race to stop him launching nukes at various countries who won’t hesitate to fire back.
However, when the smoke clears, the supernatural pull of the White House proves that no matter the outcome, we aren’t even close to being done yet…
There’s always been a Hitchcockian sense of anything goes with Chucky, ever since he first exploded onto the scene back in the original Child’s Play which was only magnified when Don Mancini himself helmed the utterly unpredictable final three movies – however, with Panic Room, the Chucky franchise has probably utilised it’s most audacious red herrings yet.
The first is the unkillable presence of Devon Sawa who, as a returning actor, is proving to be be every bit as resilient as Chucky himself as the introduction of professional Presidential double, Randall Jenkins, means that the actor is now on his fifth role in only three seasons. It’s just one of many enduring, endearing and eccentric tics that the show has built up over the years and it’s just as entertaining as it is silly. To be fair, it’s not that much of an acting stretch – Jenkins is just a less assured version of Collins – but it helps keep that excitable, anything goes, WTF, nature of Chucky going nice and strong.
However, if I have to be honest, the whole Charlotte/Pryce/paranoia angle is kind of playing itself out as it’s the only plot thread that hasn’t been utterly decimated by deranged twists and it really needs some payoff. While actress Lara Jean Chorostecki’s gradual meltdown has been fun to watch (her eyes get so wide during some moments I’m stunned they literally haven’t popped clean out of the screen), the thread hasn’t actually gone anywhere besides the cover up of numerous bodies and I’m now desperate to see Pryce get his in the worst way. No, seriously, his death – if and when it comes – needs to be wild.
Also treading water is the trifecta of Jake, Devon and Lexi who constantly do the best they can with the more thankless task of pushing the plot forward with snatched character moments (Lexi and Grant’s duet of “Don’t Fear The Reaper” is genuinely sweet) or endless planning about their latest attempt to dash the doll once and for all. The trio do their best to remind us of the dangling threads (Lexi is still looking for her missing, brainwashed sister, remember?) and run in to save the day, but I can’t shake the feeling that tbe status quo needs to be shaken up with a shock death, or something.
However, keeping everything moving is, unsurprisingly, Chucky himself (wheeling himself around in Roosevelt’s wheelchair, no less), and his play for the Situation Room proves to be as darkly funny as it is weirdly exciting. Yes, it’s obvious that the whole firing nukes thing has had its trigger pulled way to early and thus is only yet another red herring, but this literally is a scenario you simply couldn’t do with any of Chucky’s murderous peers like Freddy, Michael or Leatherface, who could get within a thousand miles of a scenario like this. Of course, there’s a couple of deaths along the way – the pen in the eye isn’t bad at all – but the real kicker is that one of the targets Chucky selects is the North Pole, because the little fucker wants every surviving child of the nuclear holocaust to know that Santa doesn’t exist. It’s such an unbelievably Chucky thing to do and what more hilarious is that after his plans are foiled, two of the three nukes have been aborted and Chucky takes a fatal bullet in the chest, he actually succeeds in turning the North Pole into a billowing mushroom cloud with a defiant “Fuck Santa!”.
While I’m guessing that there’s going to be a significant amount of fallout (pun intended) for the Untited States ramping up atomic climate change, the real take away from the end of the epidode us that Chucky is finally dead for realsies – or at least his body is – but it been hinted throughout the season that the White House has a habit of sucking in those who die within its walls and as everyone looks around thinking that the nightmare is over, we see the spirit of Charles Lee Ray himself in his original, Brad Dourif form, is unalive and well and stalking the halls of power with a smirk on his face.
Yeah, nuclear holocaust is big, but the makers of Chucky realise that it’s the personal stuff that hits harder and the promise of seeing Dourif play the titular killer in the necrotic flesh is a bigger draw than any mushroom cloud could ever hope to be.
Dourif is back – that’s the bomb.
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