Seed of Chucky is the point of the Chucky franchise where the series stopped trying to be a horror movie and just became schlock. It’s almost a wonder that a series about a killer doll was ever anything but B-movie garbage, but the first Child’s Play movie played itself very seriously as a legitimate horror movie. And while the best thing about these movies is certainly Chucky’s personality, it’s interesting that the first movie is still my favorite one, since it doesn’t feature nearly as many of his one-liners. Child’s Play 2 and 3 still kept things horror while also having some fun Chucky quotes, but then Bride of Chucky kind of tried to blend horror and comedy, with some mixed results. Now, Seed of Chucky abandons the horror aspect and just goes for comedy, with some…unfortunate results. In a sense, the Chucky franchise follows the same trajectory as something like the Evil Dead franchise, with the first movie being pure horror and then Army of Darkness eventually just becoming pure comedy. However, I think the comparisons stop here, because while Army of Darkness excelled in its comedy, Seed of Chucky is just plain bad.

So, the title is probably obvious, but if not then Seed of Chucky takes the series to its next logical point. Bride of Chucky featured Chucky finding a wife, and so now Seed of Chucky features he and Tiffany having a child. This is as dumb as it sounds, but it actually gets worse. This child, Glen, is about six years old and doesn’t know who his parents are. However, one day he sees that a movie is being made about Chucky and Tiffany, and quickly realizes that they are his parents. He sets out to revive Chucky and Tiffany from the dead, and so the two are then revived to see that they have a child. From here, things just get weird. Glen is confused about whether he’s a boy or a girl, Tiffany thinks that she and Chucky should try to stop killing people because they need to set a good example for their child, and the movie also features Jennifer Tilly (the actress that plays Tiffany) also playing herself in the movie, as she’s trying to further her career. It’s all just really strange.

I remember Child’s Play 3 had the problem of Don Mancini not having any ideas left on what to do with the franchise. This is why Child’s Play 3 ended up being really bland and uninteresting, since it didn’t really have anything original going for it. However, Seed of Chucky now has the opposite problem. It seems as though Mancini had way too many ideas this time around, and so he ends up throwing them all into the movie to form a mess of a plot. You have the meta story of featuring Jennifer Tilly and having a movie being made about Chucky, you have Chucky and Tiffany having a son, you have Glen being a transgender doll that’s confused about his identity, and you have Tiffany treating their murderous tendencies as an “addiction” that needs to be recovered from. There are a few other sub-plots too, but these are definitely the more ridiculous ones. There’s just too much going on here, and it’s all more weird than it is entertaining.

Now, look, when you have a series like this, you need to realize what you’re getting into. Seed of Chucky is a much different movie than the original Child’s Play, and so it’s unfair to judge them by the same merits. I’m not trying to judge Seed of Chucky as a form of high art, since I know it’s just meant to be B-movie schlock. However, no matter what kind of movie you have, it needs to be coherent. Also, the whole point of B-movies is for them to be entertaining. Seed of Chucky is hardly ever either of these things, and so it fails at what it’s trying to do. It has its moments, but the end result is less than satisfying.

The fact that the movie starts with an opening credits sequence of sperm traveling through the inside of a woman’s body should be enough of an indication of what kind of movie you’re in for, but I’ll give another example. After trying to not kill people, there’s a scene where Chucky kills Britney Spears by running her off the road, and he completes this with the one-liner “oops..I did it again!” It’s funny enough in a dumb way, but this is the most you’re going to get out of this movie. I enjoyed the meta humor that Jennifer Tilly provides, and some of the kills are entertaining enough, but the rest of Seed of Chucky is a bit all over the place. This is the kind of movie that I only recommend to completionists that want to watch all of the Chucky movies. Otherwise, it’s pretty dumb.

2/5