Film / Child's Play (2019)

It's time to play in a whole new way.

Child's Play, also known as Child's Play 2019, is a reboot of the slasher series Child's Play with a more modern-day take.^note In fact, because Chucky has been reimagined as a robotic artificial intelligence, the 2019 version doesn't fit the definition of a Slasher Movie, as the antagonist is no longer objectively "evil" nor driven by revenge for past transgressions. It's more aptly described as a science fiction horror film. It was announced back in July 2018 and was released the following year in June 2019 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, due to them still having the rights and concept to the original film.

The film does not involve Don Mancini and Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky, with the latter being replaced by Mark Hamill. The movie also stars Gabriel Bateman as Andy, Aubrey Plaza as Karen and Brian Tyree Henry as Detective Mike.

In the midst of electronics conglomerate Kaslan launching their most ambitious endeavor to date, a technologically advanced line of dolls under the name of Buddi, 13 year-old Andy Barclay struggles to fit in to his new surroundings after he and his mother Karen move to Chicago. Hoping to lift her son's spirits, Karen manages to obtain one of the dolls for Andy as an early birthday gift. The doll, naming himself Chucky, becomes fast friends with Andy... but it isn't long until Andy realizes that there's more to Chucky than it seems. A little too much more.

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The film has examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Chucky's constant need of Andy's approval places him squarely in this category, especially after his accidentally cutting Andy with a knife and killing his cat Mickey lead Andy to become increasingly scared of him.
  • Gabe, who installs security cameras throughout the apartment building, including one in the Barclays’ bathroom to watch Karen shower.
• Absurdly Youthful Mother: Karen snarks she "had a very productive sweet sixteen" when a coworker expresses surprise she has a kid. Justified in that Aubrey Plaza looks considerably younger than her actual age, to the point Pugg mistakes her for Andy's sister.
• Action Girl: Falyn shows absolutely no fear or restraint when she, Pugg and Omar come to Andy's rescue, and even takes down one of the hacked Buddi dolls with an axe.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Karen Barclay is more of an Absurdly Youthful Mother and a Stacy's Mom than in the original film.
• Adaptational Badass: Since this version of Chucky is an AI who can connect to other devices via the Cloud, he's able to develop a sort of omnipresence once he has the Kaslan products under his control. This also allows him to manipulate smart cars and take over an entire store simply by lifting a finger.
• Adaptational Intelligence: The dolls in the original movie can only say three different sentences, being just plastic with an internal vocalizer. Here, technological advancement gives them a fully functional, self-learning Artificial Intelligence and a functioning cyberentic endoskeleton. They're capable of actual conversation, or at least a very close simulation of it, can wirelessly interface with other Kaslan products ranging from television sets to thermostats to automated vacuum cleaners to drones and smart cars, can walk and pick things up under their own power, and they grow increasingly intelligent as they interact with the world around them. It's no wonder that the Buddi dolls are so prestigious.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the original, Karen is a devoted and struggling single mother who attempted to honestly buy a Good Guy doll from a second-hand merchant who then attempted to rape her. Here, she's rather neglectful to Andy as she doesn't really care about his opinion of her jerkass, cheating boyfriend. She also essentially blackmails a co-worker to get the Buddi doll.
• Adaptational Mundanity: This time Chucky is a robot who gained sentience instead of a doll posessed by the soul of a Serial Killer.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Nice guy is a stretch, but the original Chucky was a serial killer whose soul had been trapped in a doll and a False Friend to Andy who saw the boy either as a pawn or as a new vessel. This version of the character is an A.I. who genuinely wants to be friends with Andy, but his safety protocols were deactivated and he ends up becoming more violent to maintain that friendship.
• Adaptational Ugliness: The original Good Guy doll is a genuinely adorable, baby-faced toy◊ that grows uglier as Chucky becomes more human, while the Buddi doll has a creepier, almost adult-like face◊ and a natural Slasher Smile (and this is before he even becomes a slasher).
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Mike spends more time being a Police Are Useless Inspector Javert Hero Antagonist towards Andy than in the original movie. He doesn't really become a useful and helpful character until the end.
  • Karen was a borderline Action Mom in the original film, searching throughout all of Chicago to find information about Chucky once she finds out he is a possessed doll, fighting him off with a gun in the climax, and struggled with an adult man who attempted to rape her. Here, she does next to nothing to stop Chucky and has to be saved by her son after Chucky kidnaps her.
• Adaptation Deviation: The company that created the Chucky doll was changed from a toy company (Play Pals Toys in the original films) to a multinational MegaCorp (Kaslan here).
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Karen is a brunette rather than a blonde as she was in the original film.
  • The original movies have the Good Guy dolls be all redheads. In this film, they also come in blondes and some are African-American.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • The brand of dolls that Chucky is part of is called Buddi, as opposed to the original films' Good Guy brand.
  • Combined with Gender Flip and Race Lift, Mike Norris' partner Jack Santos is now a black woman named Willis.
• Adapted Out:
  • Charles Lee Ray, Chucky's original human identity in the previous continuity. This time, Chucky is a sentient doll from the very beginning.
  • Karen's friend Maggie, and the first victim of Chucky as a doll, from the original movie.
  • Damballa, because in this movie cyber-warfare is what created Chucky not voodoo magic.
• Adults Are Useless: An interesting case; while Andy, Falyn and Pugg are the main ones dealing with Chucky's rampages, for the most part they don't actually tell Karen or Mike about it. While Karen in particular doesn't believe Andy later on, it's more due to her not having much information to go on to support Andy's claims than Arbitrary Skepticism (and because Karen works full-time at a toy store, she's hardly available to Andy). Mike initially believed Andy was the killer, but again, given the evidence, it wasn't an unreasonable assumption.
• Age Lift: Andy here is an adolescent thirteen-year old, as opposed to the six-year old of the original film.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with. Chucky is a Buddi doll who had all its safety protocols disabled by Chien, a disgruntled worker at the Nightmarish Factory where he was manufactured.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite everything he does, Chucky is ultimately just a malfunctioning doll that struggles to fulfill his programming, and his descent into evil is often treated with a degree of tragedy. Even Andy has a brief expression of sorrow after stabbing him in the chest.
  Chucky: I thought we were... friends...?
• The Alcoholic:
  • Shane. He's rarely seen without a beer in hand (or at the fridge looking for one). His drunkenly intimidating Andy later in the film over comments Andy made about him leads directly to his death.
  • Doreen is implied to be one, although we don't see her inebriated and she's much friendlier than Shane.
• Alternate Continuity: In this take on the original film, Chucky is an AI operated doll that's genuinely trying to be Andy's friend, as opposed to a possessed toy that's trying to forcibly transfer his soul to Andy's.
• Androcles' Lion: Once Andy opens up to actively play with Chucky, the doll's AI starts to reciprocate by treating anything that threatens Andy - in any way - with extreme violence.
• Anti-Villain: Chucky genuinely wants to be Andy's best friend and please him, but has horribly misguided ways of going about it. He eventually slips off the deep end and becomes a psychopathic killer.
• An Arm and a Leg: After Chucky kills Gabe with the latter's own buzzsaw, you can see a bloody limb of Gabe's drop onto the ground even making a loud "squish" sound.
• Artistic License – Engineering: At the beginning, we see a Vietnamese sweatshop worker maliciously tamper with a Buddi doll's software on a computer. Sweatshop workers in real life aren't allowed to have computers nor the permissions to access the software of an artificial toy they are making, their job is to just sit down and build the toy. Though their security is probably laxed.
• Ascended Extra: Andy Barclay did not become a lead character until the sequels, here he is already the lead character.
• Asshole Victim: Many of Chucky's early victims.
  • Andy's cat kept scratching him, so Chucky kills it to protect his friend.
  • Karen's boyfriend Shane is similarly verbally and emotionally abusive to Andy, and Chucky kills Shane after discovering he has a Secret Other Family.
  • Also, there is Gabe, a Fat Bastard Slimeball Basement-Dweller who is a peeping tom. Chucky offs him brutally after Gabe earlier opens him up to see what's wrong while he's still online. Getting sawed in the testicles could be considered a Karmic Death.
• Ax-Crazy: It wouldn't be Chucky if he wasn't using wanton violence to solve his problems. Although this time he doesn't start out that way.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: While Chucky does attack Andy's cat, eventually killing it, it's mostly to protect Andy rather than out of genuine cruelty.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: Wes, an employee at the store selling the Buddi dolls, has to dress up as a Buddi with an oversized head which is heavy, makes him sweat and he can't even see through it. He complains "Fuck my job".
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Towards the end of the film, both Karen and Andy have accumulated significant amounts of grime, with Karen in particular shown to be heavily bleeding from the injuries Chucky inflicts.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Andy mouths off that he wants Shane out of his life, Chucky takes that as his cue to not only brutally kill him with a rototiller, but leave Andy the "gift" of his skinned face stretched over a watermelon.
• Best Friend: What Chucky really wants to be with Andy. As evidenced by the other tropes here, it doesn't go well, with Chucky tipping into Big Bad Friend later in the film. And heaven help you if you try to be Andy's best friend over him, as Doreen can attest to.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Chucky is regularly kind, well-behaved, resourceful and even accommodating to others. Until someone mistreats Andy or pretends to be his "best friend" over him.
• Big Bad Slippage: Chucky isn't so bad at first, and his relationship with Andy is genuine, but with his safety mechanisms disabled, he quickly starts resorting to murder and violence to maintain that friendship.
• Big Damn Heroes: A wounded Mike shows up just in time to gun down Chucky as he makes a final attempt on Andy's life.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: A lot of eager families at the store anticipating getting the new Buddi 2 dolls, including a little girl, get sprayed by Wes's blood when Chucky knifes him in the neck. Falyn either had her face splattered with blood or she got cut and bled.
• Brick Joke: When the kids try to get Chucky to repeat their phrases, Omar tries and fails to get him to say "This is for Tupac." Chucky does say it later, right after killing Shane.
• Bullying the Disabled: At one point Andy gets into a fight with Omar, who mocks his hearing problems. Shane also does this to Andy too.
• Bullying a Dragon: Shane's abusive treatment of Andy draws Chucky's wrath.
• Butt-Monkey: Andy sadly. His dad's gone, his hearing is impaired, his cat attacks him, and his relationship with his mother is strained due to her working so much — not to mention her jerkass of a boyfriend consistently being awful to him. Then along comes Chucky, and Andy finally thinks he's caught a break, even helping him make new friends — but then Chucky goes out of control and Andy's life becomes more of a hell that it already was.
• Came Back Strong: After Andy and the others think they've gotten rid of Chucky, Gabe not only restores him with a new power pack, but fixes his ability to interface with Kaslan products - leading him to be able to control Kaslan cars, drones and even other Buddi dolls in the climax.
• Captain Oblivious: Shane's daughters are both wearing headphones and staring at their tablet devices, distracting them from their father being killed by a rage-driven Chucky.
• Car Fu: Chucky, being a Technopath, can also control Kaslan cars, using this method to kill Mike's mother Doreen while she's stuck inside one.
• Cats Are Mean: Andy's cat Mickey Rooney is a total jerkass who hostilely bites Andy at every opportunity. Chucky puts it down.
• Cassandra Truth: Played with. While Falyn and Pugg do believe him (and help him get rid of Chucky the first time), they're not so accepting when Andy starts believing (accurately) Omar's new Buddi is actually Chucky, especially when Chucky manipulates him into having a breakdown that ends in Pugg getting hurt. And while Karen naturally doesn't believe him, he doesn't help his own case by having kept most of Chucky's more gruesome acts from her from the start.
• Cool Old Lady: Mike's mother Doreen - she can visibly tell something's off with Andy's story when he and Karen show up with a weird gift for her, but covers for him anyway.
• Composite Character: It seems Shane is a combination of several past Asshole Victim characters in the original films such as Mattson and Barb, who both cheated on their families (Mattson in the television Re-Cut only though) and Phil Simpson, who was a father figure who seemingly treats Andy poorly.
• Cranial Processing Unit: Buddi dolls have this feature.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: None of the deaths are pretty to say the least, but Shane and Gabe's are probably the worst. Not only does Shane get get both of his legs broken, but also he also also his face mutilated by a rototiller. And then there's Gabe, who is dismembered crotch-first with a table saw. On-screen.
• Cute and Psycho: Chucky looks like a cute doll who befriends and helps people through the Kaslan ads targeting kids, up until someone tampered with one of the dolls' safety protocols...
• Cyberpunk: Downplayed. The powerful megacorp Kaslan aside, the film notably shows the dangers of smart technology if not kept in check, from Chucky raising an idiosyncratic thermostat to dangerous levels to taking control of Kaslan toys in the climax.
• Dark Reprise: The final song that plays during the credits is an eerie, malicious reprise of "The Buddi Song".
• Deadpan Snarker: Karen, Andy and Mike all have moments of this during the early parts of the movie, though it's gradually forgotten as events turn serious.
• Deathbringer the Adorable: Andy's new Buddi rejects his given name of Han Solo, and rather arbitrarily decides on the very normal-sounding Chucky. Anyone familiar with the franchise should know what he goes on to become...
• Death Cry Echo: At the movie's climax, when Chucky reanimates for one last attempt at Andy's life: he malfunctions off-screen while "singing" the Buddi theme, from which he screams the final lyrics.
• Deceptively Human Robots: Up until Chucky starts speaking or malfunctioning, he is still a robot doll built as life-like as possible to appeal to its target demographic.
• Demoted to Extra: Karen and Mike were both the leads in the original film, here they are supporting characters.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Andy is partially deaf and wears a hearing aid here, unlike the original. This is done to add tension when Chucky talks to him through his aid.
• Disappeared Dad: Andy's father is absent (it's implied several times he ran out on them), and his mother's boyfriend is not a good father figure.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Gabe was quite easy for Chucky to kill because he wanted to spy on Karen taking a shower through a CCTV system.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Prior to the release of the film, smart toys were already fodder for controversy due to privacy and cybersecurity concerns, as toymakers were rather complacent about hardening their toys' security and avoiding or at least toning down pervasive advertising towards children. One such example being My Friend Cayla who became more known for spying and hacking concerns than anything else.
• Doing In the Wizard: Chucky is now a robot with defective programming rather than a doll possessed by voodoo.
• Dramatic Irony: After Chucky breaks out of the glass-door closet that Karen locked him in, Andy inspects said closet for Chucky but can't find him as while you (the viewer) can see Chucky on the glass reflection.
• Driven to Suicide: Chien jumps off the factory's roof to land on a Car Cushion after getting fired and also disabling the safety protocols to a Buddi doll.
• The End... Or Is It?: After Chucky's rampage, Kaslan orders a mass recall of the Buddi dolls and stores them away in a warehouse. And then one of the dolls begins malfunctioning in its box.
• Everything Is an Instrument: The main theme uses kiddie toy instruments alongside professional ones and vocals to add to the theme of the villain being a murderous toy.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: In the film's climax, Chucky takes control of every Kaslan product in his vicinity, turning toys, cars, thermostats, and numerous other things into deadly weapons.
• Everything Is Online: To an absurd degree as much of the products, such as cars, thermostats and power tools, are all made by one company. Even the store's various products and building's systems are capable of being remotely hacked and controlled.
• Evil Is Petty: Chucky makes a point of playing back Andy's "Shane's an asshole" comment directly to Shane, just to get him in trouble after Andy shuns him in the wake of his trying to stab Pugg during the kids' film night. Then there's Doreen telling Andy he's her best friend. He does not take it well. At all.
• Expy: Omar seems to be one of Tyler from Child's Play 3, as both are African-American child acquaintances of Andy who both end up in possession of Chucky and initially refused to listen to Andy about Chucky's true nature out of thinking he's jealous. Both characters don't realize the truth until the climax and team up with Andy to stop Chucky. That aspect of Omar wearing a military camouflage-colored vest in his appearances references Child's Play 3 being the Boot Camp Episode of the series and Tyler himself being a military school student. However, unlike Tyler in the third film, Omar seems to take up Shelton's role as The Bully for Andy in his screen time until becoming Fire-Forged Friends with him.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Omar, one of the neighborhood kids, initially isn't nearly as friendly with Andy as Falyn or Pugg, making fun of him over the fact his Buddi doll Chode actually works, and later getting into into a fistfight with him after Andy flips out over Chode secretly being Chucky. Later, when Falyn deduces the truth, Omar ends up going with her and Pugg to save Andy, with the whole group ending up fighting for their lives against Chucky's army of controlled Kaslan products. The finale has Omar joining the other three in smashing up Chucky's body, and the final montage shows them hanging out as friends.
• For Want Of A Nail: All Karen wanted was for Andy to make a real-life friend and not just be playing with his smartphone all day (like most kids of his age). So she buys Andy a Buddi doll, and Andy at first likes it. But then it goes horribly right.
• Foreshadowing: Andy shows Chucky that knives can be used for cutting, which Andy used on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Chucky takes immediate interest in the knife and happily mimics stabbing.
  • Karen at one point puts a ribbon around her neck, jokingly as if she was gonna hang herself at Andy's initial reaction towards Chucky. Guess how Chucky tries to kill her.
• Frameup: Many of Chucky's antics get pinned on Andy. Mike tried to arrest him for it, only to later learn the truth.
• Friendship Denial: This is what triggers Chucky to attack Andy later in the movie.
• Groin Attack: Gabe ends up getting killed by being split in half by a saw Chucky turned on - from the crotch up.
• Genre Savvy: When Andy explains Chucky's ability to swear as his being a bit different, Falyn notes "this is how every robot apocalypse scenario begins". Throughout the film she's notably a step quicker than Pugg and the other boys when it comes to believing Andy about Chucky.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Chien, the factory worker who created the doll that turned into Chucky.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Being Andy's best friend is the prime feature the robot adheres itself to, but the more self-aware it becomes in the movie, the more he is willing to harm others for his ultimate purpose.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Chucky saws Gabe in half with a table saw. Gabe dips his foot onto the saw, cutting his foot before he drops after losing grip on the pipes and lands testicles first into the saw, then gets split in half.
• Harmful to Minors: Even if the movie features Improbable Infant Survival, the Zed Mart rampage has children watching some gruesome murders and even getting splattered in blood.
• Hate Sink: Shane treats his girlfriend's son terribly, and he's also cheating on his wife and kids with Karen.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Andy becomes framed for Chucky's murders when policeman Mike Norris falsely concludes that he's responsible for the deaths of both Shane and Doreen (Mike's own mother). Mike then arrests Andy, ignoring his pleas to believe him that it was Chucky who did all of it.
• High-Pressure Blood: The movie is full of this, but Wes wearing a Buddi costume whom Chucky stabs in the throat really emphasizes this trope, especially since his neck sprays blood all over a little girl's face (including her eyes), making her scream.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Chucky kills Shane with his own tiller and Gabe with his own table saw.
  • Andy stabs Chucky with the same knife the latter used on various people. But it's averted in that it didn't finish Chucky, he was able to reboot himself to a back-up generator.
• If I Can't Have You…: This is basically what Chucky's motivation later in the film becomes when he starts to feel like Andy has abandoned him for other people.
• Jerkass: We get a glimpse of how much of a jerk Shane really is when he takes it personally that Andy doesn't like him.
• Karma Houdini: Chien turns off the doll's safety protocols before killing himself, with no one having the slightest idea what he's done and can't hold a dead guy accountable if they did.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When Omar and Andy fight in Zed Mart, Omar specifically enquires if he's deaf when he doesn't get away from his Buddi - then sneers that, oh right, he is before actually knocking his hearing aid out.
  • During the climax Chucky uses playback of Karen telling Shane that Andy is "different" to call Andy broken like him, even talking to him directly through his hearing aid to do it.
• Killer Rabbit: Just like in the original, it's hard to suspect that a cute and friendly-seeming doll is actually capable of doing the horrendous crimes its owner accuses Chucky of.
• Killer Robot: Chucky, a robotic "Buddi" doll who has all his safety protocols turned off, and proceeds to start using any means necessary to be his owner's best friend, including murder.
• Killer Teddy Bear: A Buddi 2 teddy bear is reprogrammed by Chucky to carry out his killing spree.
• The Leader: While Andy is The Hero and the one who knows most about Chucky, Falyn tends to be this among the group that lives in Andy's apartment block. She keeps it together when Andy is freaking out over finding Shane's skinned face enough to know they need to get rid of the evidence (Pugg, by contrast, throws up in a bin) - and when Andy freezes when they're deactivating Chucky, she steps in to rip out his power core. Later, she's the first to realise that Andy may not be losing it claiming Omar's Buddi Chode is actually Chucky, uses Omar's phone to prove it after threatening him into submission, and leads the others to Zed-Mart in order to get him away from Chucky. Even during the carnage Chucky unleashes there she's cool under pressure, slapping a panicking Pugg back to reality and saving Andy from a bear-model Buddi 2.
  • Laid out pretty succinctly in this article.
• Lighter and Softer: Than the original film and the sequels that follow. The setting itself is far less of an unrepentant Crapsack World and a World of Jerkass unlike the original continuity, one of Chucky's non-Jerkass victims Doreen Norris is likable enough for the audience to actually sympathize when she's killed, The Bully here manages to survive the film and become a better person, Chucky of all characters undergoes an Adaptational Nice Guy makeover, and the film even ends on a franchise first: a mostly definitively happy conclusion for the protagonists that makes that makes it crystal clear Andy managed to clear his name of Chucky's atrocities, unlike the original films' Andy facing a bleakly ambiguous fate at the end of each installment.
• Love Makes You Evil: Chucky's relentless quest for Andy's friendship justifies the movie's carnage.
• Mama Bear: If Karen’s pre-kill one-liner has anything to say about it.
• MegaCorp: Kaslan produces everything from cars to thermostats to toys. The Buddi dolls are able to interface with them like a digital office assistant as one of its many features. This gets used to horrifying effect when Chucky takes control of nearby Kaslan products to wreak havoc.
• Misplaced Retribution: In the factory where Chucky was assembled, a daydreaming worker (Chien) was rudely dismissed by his Jerkass boss, who also slaps and mocks him. Chien retaliates by turning off the doll's safety protocols and setting him loose on an unsuspecting consumer half the world away.
• Mistaken for Insane: Thanks to Chucky, from Karen's perspective Andy's having a nervous breakdown - including fighting, stealing another kid's phone, smashing up their apartment with a baseball bat and being led away in cuffs - all because he keeps telling her his doll is trying to kill them. It's slightly more plausible than normal because she's Locked Out of the Loop regarding Chucky's actions until fairly late in the film, so hearing it all at once sounds nuts to say the least.
• Momma's Boy: Mike Norris, whose mother makes him frequent her apartment and have dinner with her weekly. Mike then asks Andy to join them for dinner since his mother is getting lonely and simply wants someone to talk to.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song: The first trailer makes use of Harry Nilsson's "Best Friend".
• Morton's Fork: Chucky forces Gabe to choose between burning his hands from a hot metal pipe or let go of the pipe and fall into a buzzsaw. Gabe desperately tries clinging onto the former option, but gets the saw in the end.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Chucky's answer to anything upsetting Andy - the cat scratching him, his mother's dick boyfriend intimidating him - is to off it as brutally as possible.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Chucky has a brief one, when he accidentally cuts Andy with a knife while imitating a slasher movie villain.
  "I'm sorry, Andy..."
• Mythology Gag:
  • When the disgruntled Kaslan worker finishes making Chucky after removing his safety protocols, lightning strikes above the factory. This is a nod to Chucky's previous origin, where Charles Lee Ray summons a lightning storm during the soul transfer ritual.
  • "The Buddi Song" has the lyric "You are my buddy until the end", which is a variant of the original Chucky doll's catchphrase, "I'm your friend to the end!"
  • Andy's Pre-Mortem One-Liner from the first film ("This is the end, friend.") is referenced in the final battle, only this time, Mike is the one who drops it.
  Chucky: You are my buddy... until the EEEEEEEND!
  *Chucky gets shot down*
  Mike: This is the end.
  • Andy uses a bat to smash up the place looking for Chucky. In the original film, Andy grabs a bat to hit Chucky with.
  • Wes is forced to wear a Buddi costume with an oversized head, similar to the one in the Good Guy Dolls commercial in the original movie.
  • At the start of the climax, Andy says "Alright Chucky, you wanna play?". Similar to Chucky's line "Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?" in the original film.
• Never My Fault: When Karen calls Shane out for talking down on Andy, Shane tells her it's her problem.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The second trailer uses the shot of Andy and his friends wielding weapons to imply that they end up fighting Chucky themselves. In the actual context of the scene, they use the weapons to destroy Chucky's remains after he's already been killed.
• Nice Guy: Mike. He invites Andy over for dinner with him and his mother without even really knowing him, simply because he sees Andy in the hall and realizes he's lonely.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In the first trailer, we never get a good look at Chucky's face, nor do we hear him speak. We are also never directly shown Chucky killing anyone, only focusing on the aftermath of his carnage.
• Obliviously Evil: Because of his malfunction, Chucky displays a naive innocence as he starts resorting to violent measure to make Andy happy. He doesn't fully jump off the deep end until the climax.
• Off with His Head!: Chucky is ultimately done in when Karen rips his head off.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Admittedly always a Child's Play staple, but this Chucky can move ridiculously fast when no-one is watching, best seen when he somehow manages to get to the bingo hall ahead of Doreen's Kaslan car despite her having a headstart on him in a vehicle as he's pursued by Andy.
• Parents in Distress:
  • As Shane falls off the roof and breaks his legs (after Chucky kicks his ladder out from under him), he cries out to his two daughters for help. Unluckily for him, they are too engrossed in their tablets (with headphones on) to save him.
  • Andy has to save his mother Karen from Chucky, who deliberately used Karen as bait to lure him in. Chucky planned on hanging Karen with rope so that she dies of asphyxiation.
  • Detective Mike Norris is very defensive and protective of his mother Doreen. When she dies, he attempts to arrest Andy, believing he had something to do with it. Once the truth of the matter becomes apparent, he helps put an end to Chucky.
• Parent with New Paramour: Karen is dating Shane, whom Andy dislikes and accidentally puts a hit out on when Chucky overhears Andy saying he wishes he would disappear.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Played with: in the first half of the film there's no getting around the fact Chucky is still a small doll (he's barely knee-height to Andy), so when killing he has to rely on stealth, ambush tactics and inventive use of whatever weapons are at hand. Then Gabe fixes his ability to connect with Kaslan tech, so while he isn't any more physically powerful, now he can take control of any Kaslan tech going to overpower his enemies.
• Played for Horror: Nick Allen's review on rogerebert.com posits that the movie does this with Toy Story and some of its plot elements, and it's not too far a stretch:
  "In a larger sense, “Child's Play” creates a fun nightmare out of the “Toy Story” fantasy—that it’s horrifying to imagine a sentient play-thing like Woody would find a sole purpose in wanting to please their masters, especially if the toy is themselves obsessive and has no sense of boundaries."
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Shane is an ableist who abuses Andy for his hearing aid.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: In the original continuity, Chucky was brought to life through voodoo magic. This retelling replaces any semblance of voodoo with modern robotics and technology, leaning a bit more towards sci-fi horror than it does supernatural horror.
• Precision F-Strike: Doreen gets a great one during Chucky's attempt to kill her.
  Doreen: You Hobbit motherfucker!
• Psycho Knife Nut: It wouldn't be a Child's Play film if Chucky wasn't this.
• Psychotic Smirk: A brief look at Chucky's face shows his mouth moving to form one when Andy expresses his deep hatred of Shane - needless to say, Shane gets a rather brutal death not long after.
• Race Lift: Mike Norris is black in this reboot.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In a clever play on Chucky's new electronic toy nature, his eyes turn red when he's "malfunctioning" - by the film's end they're permanently red. The Buddi 2 dolls Chucky takes control of display the same trait.
• Robotic Psychopath: Since all his safety protocols were turned off, Chucky has no issue with using weapons, hacking other devices, committing illegal acts, or killing animals or humans.
• Sanity Slippage: Chucky initially starts out as a relatively harmless doll who is given the wrong influence from what he observes. However, things start to change when his protective nature of Andy causes him to kill Shane and present his head to Andy as a gift. Then he goes full blown Yandere when Andy and his friends attack him, shut him down, and throw him down a garbage chute.
• Setting Update: The original film took place in the late 80's, while this version is set in 2019. Modern technology like drones play a prominent part in Chucky's rampage, who is now a robotic doll himself.
• Shout-Out:
  • Andy and his friends watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (which also doubles as Product Placement due to being owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the distributor of this film), specifically a scene where Leatherface is handling one of his flesh faces. Chucky later gives Andy a melon with Shane's skinned face as a gift.
  • A poster of Killer Klowns from Outer Space is visible on Andy's bedroom walls. This movie also came out in 1988, the same year as the first Chucky movie.
  • Andy's cat is named Mickey Rooney.
  • Shane appears to be based off the character Erich from the The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "Living Doll", also being the abusive stepfather of the human child who gains a friendship with a living toy before being killed by the toy.
  • When Andy first boots up his Buddi, he asks what Andy will name him. Andy says Han Solo, to which the Buddi immediately responds with, "Chucky." Chucky himself is voiced by Luke Skywalker.
  • When Andy goes to confront Chucky and rescue his mom, he sees a toy cop car that voices the line "dead or alive, you're coming with me.", which also doubles as a nod to the fact Orion Pictures distributed RoboCop as well and the franchise's property is owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
  • Doreen's aforementioned Precision F-Strike is a nod to The Lord of the Rings film franchise, which in turn references Brad Dourif (Chucky's original portrayer) to be part of both the Child's Play franchise and The Lord of the Rings franchise where Dourif plays Gríma Wormtongue.
  • One of the Buddi accessories we see at the store where Karen works is a leprechaun costume.
• Single-Task Robot: Averted. Buddi can do several complex tasks to accommodate his owner (from mundane things like speaking and recognizing different languages to even adjusting temperature via Kaslan's idiosyncratic thermostat). He's basically a more physically interactive form of Amazon's Alexa.
• Slasher Smile: Chucky's face seems to be this in default mode, though why the creators of the Buddi line decided to do this is anyone's guess. Once he becomes more sentient the animatronics in his face allow him to do an even more disturbing one.
• Slimeball: Apartment landlord Basement-Dweller Gabe is an overweight, unshaven sex-offender. Him watching Karen shower through his security camera could be a Mythology Gag reference to the Karen's Attempted Rape by the vagrant who sold her Chucky.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Chien. He messes with Chucky's safety protocols just to spite his boss and is thoroughly responsible for releasing the killer doll into the world. If he had kept his composure (or if his boss didn't act like an abusive asshole), things wouldn't have gone to hell so quickly.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Karen's job in the refunds department.
• Spring-Loaded Corpse: Chucky becomes one during his final struggle against Andy.
• Surveillance Drone: Chucky uses a swarm of Kaslan drones in the final act to attack (and kill) people.
• Stacy's Mom: Karen is considered very beautiful by a lot of male characters in the movie. Gabe tries watching her shower naked with a CCTV, Pugg comments Andy's "sister" is hot, and Shane cheats on his wife (whom he already has 2 daughters with) to make Karen his affair girlfriend.
• Sympathy for the Devil: The movie does a good job of making Chucky really endearing through the innocence displayed in his (bloody) quest to win and keep Andy for himself.
  • This trope is doubled when Chucky reacts concerned of Andy's disapproval (and eventual meltdowns) towards his violent actions (which are ironically carried out in order to "please" Andy to begin with).
• Tagline: More than a toy... he's your best friend.
• Take That!:
  • The teaser posters for the film are obvious jabs at Toy Story 4. One has Chucky walking away from a severed doll arm that belongs to a lawyer friendly version of Woody Pride holding his cowboy hat. Another features Chucky barbecuing half of Slinky, a third shows the aftermath of Buzz getting shot by a laser gun, and a fourth has Mr. Potato Head being impaled in the head with a knife. Two more have a smashed Hamm and Chucky burning Rex's skin off his skeleton.
    • Also, both Toy Story and this movie have a human boy who is named Andy and loves to play with toys!
  • Andy, and also Shane's 2 daughters are so infatuated with their smartphones to the point they disregard making friends with other people and become less aware of their surroundings in real life. This could serve as a satire of today's children in the 21st century becoming so absorbed into technology they are shut off from the real world.
  • The posters extended to Chucky taking out Annabelle. Fitting, since her next film came out four days after this one.
• Take This Job and Shove It: The Vietnamese factory worker's final "screw you" to his boss consists of removing a Buddi doll's safeguards and then jumping off the roof of the factory.
• Tear Off Your Face: Chucky cuts off Shane's face and staples it to watermelon, which he then brings to Andy's house.
• Technopath: The Buddi doll can connect and interact with every other Kaslan application and electronic devices (from smartphones to electronic cars and even other toys), meaning they can also be remotely hacked by the corrupt AI to do his bidding.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: After he's been put offline by mutliple stab wounds, getting shot and Karen ripping his head off, the gang proceed to smash his body with sledgehammers and baseball bats, before burning the remains.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Andy goes back into Zed Mart by himself, shutting Pugg, Falyn, and Omar out to save Karen and get him alone for a final confrontation with Chucky.
• Those Two Guys: Pugg and Falyn are always seen in each other's company, even when part of a larger group, and are Andy's closest allies throughout the film. It's implied they're brother and sister, though the film never makes it clear.
• Tragic Monster: Surprisingly, Chucky himself. Rather than being a doll possessed by a serial killer, Chucky's homicidal tendencies were the result of a malfunction caused by a disgruntled employee. Chucky's desire to be friends with Andy is genuine and just wants to make him happy. Even when he starts murdering those that wrong Andy, his innocence comes across as a child that doesn't know any better.
• Tyke-Bomb: From the get-go, Chucky is full of potential to be a powerful ally to automate (and even humanize) most mundane tasks. This fact makes him even more dangerous when he is on the "dark side".
• Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: Chucky's face is still so uncanny valley-ish that it begs the question of how the toy was marketed to children anyway? This hasn't changed from the original movie either.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Even if he was just getting even with his asshole boss, Chien the factory worker unwittingly let loose a killer into Andy's life.
  • Gabe finding and repairing Chucky to sell on the internet also counts, as he had no idea of the doll's true nature. Even worse, his peeping tom cameras overhearing Doreen calling Andy her best friend directly leads to her death.
• Villain Song: "The Buddi Song", sung by Mark Hamill himself. It's actually a very sweet and adorable song, but it's not without its dark implications.
  I love you more than you will ever know. I will never let you go...
  Don't ever leave me, please don't say goodbye. I'll be yours 'til the day that you die...
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Doreen and Mike Norris respectively. Mike is a dead-serious police detective with a dry sense of humor, while Doreen embarrassed Mike in front of Andy for never buying her a present like Andy "did".
• Wicked Stepmother: Karen's boyfriend, Shane, is a Gender Flip version, he's abusive towards Karen's son, Andy.
• Yandere: Chucky towards Andy. Chucky wants Andy's friendship all to himself, and is willing to kill anyone to get it, regardless of whether Andy wants it or not.
• You Killed My Mother: After Chucky kills Doreen for calling Andy her new best friend, Mike breaks down into anger and works to avenge his fallen mother (though he initially believes it was Andy). Ultimately in the climax, he shoots Chucky down.

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People, let me tell ya 'bout my best friend...

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