Unlike other 80s horror icons, Chucky is resistant to the typical slasher formula. Where every Friday the 13th is minor variations on the same dead teens, each new Chucky movie splices slasher kills into new milieus and subgenres. Bride of Chucky introduced a Natural Born Killers dynamic. Seed of Chucky transforms the series into a dark meta-comedy about the narcissism of celebrity culture. The newly released Cult of Chucky takes Chucky to a classic horror movie location, seen in movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Exorcist III, Asylum and Alone in the Dark — the mental institution. But more than playing with well-established horror props and tropes, Cult of Chucky embraces one particular vision of psychological treatment and distress. Chucky says so himself.
Cult of Chucky grants the murderous doll a new voodoo power: the ability to make copies of himself. Soon there are multiple Chuckys running around, killing and creating havoc. “I’m just saying, it behooves us to watch our step,” one Chucky says to another.
“Behooves, listen to you, you sound like Hannibal Lecter,” the other Chucky replies. “I can’t believe they cancelled that show.”
Player.One recently sat down with Cult writer/director (and Chucky’s creator) Don Mancini and Chucky regular Jennifer Tilly (in Cult she plays Tiffany inside the body of herself, actor Jennifer Tilly… it’s a long story). Mancini described the connection he sees between Cult of Chucky and Hannibal.
“A lot of it is the aesthetic. The sort of Bryan Fuller-esque “beauty of horror” aesthetic. Although it’s something I’ve tried to do in previous films — it’s something Bryan and I have in common — I think I took a little bit from him there.”
“Don wanted me in a red suit because the movie is very stark and chilly and cold. He wanted Tiffany to come in with a red suit and be a big, walking splotch of blood,” Tilly said.
Slashers are typically very literal. Unlike ghosts and demons, slashers don’t need to evoke an afterlife or anything unearthly. There’s no need for anything metaphorical or ambiguous when your audience is looking for sharp objects penetrating flesh — a straightforward relation between the material world and its victims. The supernatural exists only as a convenient plot widget to return a killer back to life.
Hannibal, though it’s full of serial killers, is far less concerned with the physical interaction between killers and victims. Often victims are seen only after death, the act of murder itself unimportant to the thrust of the narrative: capturing and understanding an aberrant psychology. This often involves visual metaphors, as the action on-screen captures an interior state of mind, rather than the literal events.
The death of Claire (Grace Lynn Kung) is a classic slasher kill — Chucky shatters a skylight and the falling glass decapitates her — but also captures a number of distinctly Hannibal-like qualities, including an aesthetic fascination with the dead body as art object, symmetrical composition and the intrusion of a magical or peaceful symbol, in this case gently falling snow. And most importantly, it dissolves into the face of the protagonist Nica (Fiona Dourif), conflating Claire’s death with the main character’s psychological state:
But the biggest influence Hannibal had on Cult of Chucky wasn’t the visual presentation, but the writing. After penning what he described as a “fan letter” to Fuller, Mancini was brought onboard to write for Hannibal ’s third season. He’s credited on two episodes: “Dolce” and “...and the Woman Clothed in Sun.”
“One of the ways Bryan works is that he’s constantly rewriting. I mean, it’s a feature of television, but Bryan is kind of a rewrite Nazi,” Mancini told Player.One. “And I did that on this movie to a degree I’ve never done before. I was rewriting just constantly, every day.”
The result is a surprisingly deep bench of characters for a slasher. Dr. Foley (Michael Therriault), Nica’s therapist, might even remind viewers of Hannibal’s Dr. Chilton. They both love invasive hypnotherapy.
Chucky probably wouldn’t get along with Hannibal Lecter, but his movies are richer than ever thanks to his influence.
Cult of Chucky is out now on Blu-ray and also available for streaming on Netflix.
- Brad Dourif as Chucky will never get old
- A worthy nemesis in Nica Pierce
- Lots of violence and practical effects
- Combines best elements of the series
- Not very scary
- Mental institute setting is barebones and overplayed
- Chucky's new powers are joked in to existence
