Thread by @VespertilioGem

It's Friday night, this, the eve of the ides of May. Why not ignore some obvious warning signs and tackle another Chucky movie?
It's #Kissmmatewatches Time with Curse of Chucky (2013), dir by Don Mancini!

"He's back! From the filmmakers that brought you Chucky comes the terrifying return of the possessed pint-sized doll who brings unparalleled bloodshed and terror to a new family."
Cool, cool, um, question: will we have Jennifer Tilly? Yes? Okay, I'm in!

#Kissmmatewatches I have not watched either Curse or Cult of Chucky, so I'm flying completely blind.

Wish me luck!

#Kissmmatewatches We start with a delivery van driving to a beautiful secluded home in the woods that seems to belong to a painter and her wheelchair-using daughter. (The actress does not regularly use wheelchairs afaik.)

#Kissmmatewatches The girl in the wheelchair (Nica) gets the door while her mother is busy painting. The delivery guy starts hitting on Nica and recognizes her from college. Turns out Nica never finished her thesis, so never graduated. Doesn't turn off the delivery guy, though.

#Kissmmatewatches When he leaves, Nica asks her mother (Sarah) if he was just hitting on her.
N: "Should I ask him out?"
S: "No. He was just being nice."
Nica immediately looks crestfallen. Life-changing injury, perhaps?

#Kissmmatewatches Sarah swears she didn't order anything. It doesn't say who it's from either. It opens up to reveal a Good Guy Doll! And it looks SUPER different!
(pic not from movie, but closest I could find)

#Kissmmatewatches Without any batteries checked nor any switch flipped, the doll looks to Sarah. "Hi, I'm chucky! Wanna play?" Nica says Alice will love it, but Sarah puts the doll straight in the trash.

#Kissmmatewatches That night, Nica is woken up to Sarah screaming. Nica goes downstairs (via elevator) and screams before calling the cops. We don't see what exactly happened to Sarah yet, but we see Chucky sitting in the living room as if he was meant to be there.

#Kissmmatewatches So everyone thinks that Sarah hurt herself and died before anyone could help her. Nica's sister Barbie comes to help Nica during this time. She brought a friend, Father Frank.
(We have a living doll movie and it took this long to get a character named Barbie.)

#Kissmmatewatches Nica and Sarah left the church a long time ago, so isn't happy to see Father here. Barbie says she brought him so that they have someone to talk to. Nica points out they have each other.
Barb: "We have to pray for her. To be forgiven."
RED FLAGS! RED FLAGS HIGH!

#Kissmmatewatches What I've gathered:
Sarah was on medication for a mental illness.
Nica and Sarah left the church because they felt their health and their faith were at odds.
Barbie is the abled and "blessed" white woman who thinks a little Jesus can cure anything.

#Kissmmatewatches More family walks in. We have the brother-in-law Ian, niece Alice, and au pair (just the nanny) Jill. Ian seems to care more about Nica than anyone else cause he asks about her new chair. Bless him.

#Kissmmatewatches Alice needs to go potty, so she runs to the bathroom. There, she finds Chucky in the shower, but he's looking MUCH creepier! It's subtle, but it's enough to scare!

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky seems to lunge for Alice who screams, but when Ian and Jill get the door open, Alice is holding him peacefully, his eyes and mouth back to "normal".
Alice: "He scared me half to death!"

#Kissmmatewatches In case this is recurring, the mostly doll look is being called Peaceful!Chucky. The creepy "too human for me thankyousoverymuch" look is being called Creeps!Chucky. Ok? Ok.

#Kissmmatewatches OMG Barb just gave Nica a fucking pamphlet for an assisted living place. Barb wants to sell the home because she's no longer as rich. Since the house is both of theirs, Barb can't just sell it. Nica is rightfully pissed Barb cares more about money than her.

#Kissmmatewatches Alice rushes in to ruin the horrible moment with her finding Chucky. Nica says she'll make dinner for them all with Alice and starts taking her anger out on the tomatoes. Chucky watches with, what I hope, is glee.

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky put rat poison in one of the soups! (Please be Barb's!)
We can see which one is poisoned because it's grainy and powdery while the rest of the meal is normal.
Father Frank blesses the meal. Barb immediately asks if there's meat in the "chili".

#Kissmmatewatches Barb is HATING the fact Ian and Jill are getting along. Die mad.
Everyone eats SUPER slow. We don't see anyone react for 5-10 minutes. Father Frank gets up in a hurry and leaves, and it looks like he isn't doing well.
Oh look, he had a crash. Offscreen.

#Kissmmatewatches Frank gives us some gore when he does finally die. The cop that sees him knows him well. Not only was the cop in his parish, they were both AA members.

#Kissmmatewatches Back at the house, Nica shows some old home movies where we get some backstory. Sarah lost her husband before Nica was born. She was never the same after tha- HOLY SHIT THAT'S CHARLES LEE RAY IN THE BACK. That's ACTUALLY him! In a red Hawaii shirt, too.

#Kissmmatewatches Alice says she can't find Chucky, that he's hiding. Jill is shoved to go look for him while Alice prepares for bed. Oh, and phone lines are out. Because storm?

#Kissmmatewatches Jill wanders more, finding dolls that AREN'T Chucky. Also, there's a lot of music stings and a few jumpscares. Jill vents at Barb in the kitchen who- WOAH. Okay! We have some WLW infidelity going on! And Ian doesn't know!

#Kissmmatewatches Oh, BTW, a knife is missing from the kitchen. FYI. Just kind of a thing.

#Kissmmatewatches Nica sees that Chucky is now on the couch next to Ian. Ian mentions that he hasn't been spending enough time with Alice. Peaceful!Chucky speaks up. "Life is short!" Ian gets him to say all the other phrases with a nostalgic smile.

#Kissmmatewatches Nica volunteers to take Chucky up to Alice. The house loses power when she's halfway up the elevator. No one seems to hear her.
Suddenly the lights turn on and Peaceful!Chucky is staring right at her!!!! AH!! But all is well again.

#Kissmmatewatches Barb goes up to send Alice to bed and then gives Nica a lecture on "overexerting" because it might cause Nica to "get worse" or something. It's very stressful because I feel she doesn't really care, and I know she doesn't listen.

#Kissmmatewatches Any attempt to portray the realistic violence disabled people face from their families is undermined by making Barb a cartoonish villain.
Barb is queer, a cheater, greedy, controlling, entitled, pompous, and abusive to all her family.

#Kissmmatewatches It's hard for someone to see this and think "oh shit do I or other people I know do this?" because Barb is such a horrid character that OF COURSE no one could be like BARB. No one realistic!

#Kissmmatewatches No one pushes against Barb's orders! Only Nica has, and Jill once when no one else was looking. For disabled people, this could be just depressing to watch because there's no solidarity from anyone else in this movie. Nica is all on her own against her sister!

#Kissmmatewatches (BTW, no I'm not saying being queer is bad/villainous, but there is a trope around villains being queer or queer-coded. At this point, it's unfortunately another box in the list to check off.)

#Kissmmatewatches Alice goes up some stairs, but is called back before she goes too far. Nica does stand up for herself ("I'm not a child. I can take care of myself!") right before we see she has a knife wound on her leg. Turns out Nica can't feel anything on her legs. Hmm.

#Kissmmatewatches Alice doesn't bless Chucky in her prayers because he said there is no god.
Alice asks if she's going to die because grandma Sarah died and Chucky said everyone dies. Barb tells her goodnight. Just make her watch Bridge to Tarabithia. It'll answer her questions.

#Kissmmatewatches Nica calls the delivery service to see where Chucky came from. The phone service is shit so all we hear is "evidence depository".
Alice is quaking in fear of the thunder, so she covers herself and Chucky with the blankets and turns on a light. HI, CREEPS!CHUCKY!

#Kissmmatewatches Oh GOD he has like human teeth and it's NOT ok and I really don't want to look at him.

#Kissmmatewatches Creeps!Chucky stares at Alice.
Alice: "I'm scared, Chucky."
Chucky blinks and laughs. "You fuckin' should be."

Somehow, that voice soothes away the fear I had about the doll. I don't know why it's calming, but I'm taking it!

#Kissmmatewatches Nica goes to check on Alice, but runs into Jill going to bed. See, Jill is sharing a room with Alice. When she walks in, she turns on a light, undresses to her hot pink underwear, and starts up a video call.
Are we sure Jill is a certified Nanny?

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky starts stalking Jill in the room. We don't know Alice's status yet, either.
Nica researches the doll and gets hits about Charles Lee Ray and the multiple cases of "the doll did it". We even get to see little Andy again! Hi, Andy! Poor kid.

#Kissmmatewatches JILL AND BARB ARE VIDEO SEXTING ROOMS AWAY FROM EACH OTHER?! Jill is in the room with a single-digit-age child! Barb is next to her husband! This is queerphobic. Someone from the 1990s wrote this shit, not 2013. Fucking hell...

#Kissmmatewatches Creeps!Chucky kicks over a water bucket (dripping from ceiling) to electrocute Jill. The laws of physics gets the real killing blow here as nothing acts like it should all so we can have a creepy (but sexy) scene. Also, not sexy. So double fail. All around.

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky's face is kind of creepier than before, but the puppetry still feels a little off. So there's some pros and cons going on here.

#Kissmmatewatches We see Barb who wants to check on Alice and- OH SHIT Ian knew about Barb and Jill and is prepared to file for divorce while taking Alice from her! Damn! Considering his job is a barista right now, I don't know how well he'd handle it, but it's better than Barb!

#Kissmmatewatches So a great tip: this shows a great DARVO in action. I guess if anyone wants a good example, go 50 minutes into Curse of Chucky. Who knew?

#Kissmmatewatches We finally check back with the cop who is heading out to the house Father Frank visited to hopefully get some answers. And we're away again to Barb.

#Kissmmatewatches Barb sees Peace!Chucky on the stairs and thinks Alice is in the attic. Nica stops her from going up there by calling out to her from floor one (Barb on floor two). They talk over the banister.

#Kissmmatewatches Nica tries to tell her that there's a spirit in the doll, but Barb means it as Ian's nanny cam (because who can just have a normal conversation with BARB, amirite?). Barb goes up the attic stairs, where Nica can't reach her, to find Alice.

#Kissmmatewatches Nica crawls up the steps while Barb walks around with Chucky trying to find her daughter. She puts Chucky down to go on unencumbered. Chucky follows her, knife close by.

#Kissmmatewatches Barb gets eye-to-eye with Peace!Chucky and notices something strange. She peels back some latex from his face to reveal old stitching. A hint to Bride?

#Kissmmatewatches Barb pulls off more and Creeps!Chucky almost bites her! He runs at her with a knife and holy fuck does he look more like his human self! His hair and face seems to match less to the Good Guy dolls and more to the actor who played CLR. I love it!

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky stabs Barb while she screams. Nica looks up at the stairs to the attic and sees Barb fall down, now missing an eye. And dead. Nica grabs a wheelchair from the closet and starts looking for help.

#Kissmmatewatches Jill's dead. Barb's dead. Alice is missing. Ian wakes up (with Nica shaking him). He sees the carnage and gets Nica back downstairs to her wheelchair. They run to the garage, but Ian goes back inside to get Alice. Nica warns to stay away from Chucky.

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky starts the car Nica is near to suffocate her. She flails about trying to vent the garage. Finally, she grabs the ax and breaks the car window, but Chucky grabs the keys and swallows them before she can reach them. Ian finds her with an ax, blaming a doll.

#Kissmmatewatches Ian blames Nica for the deaths just as she starts to have a cardiac problem (not sure what). She begs Ian to inject adrenalin under a rib, but he just watches her pass out. Next we see that Ian's brought her back inside and tied her to a wheelchair. Oh joy.

#Kissmmatewatches Ian still blames Nica, so he looks at the camera feed he put inside the Chucky doll. He sees the footage of Alice getting locked in a closet and something sneaking up on them right now! Ian dies doing nothing about Chucky at all. It's kind of sad. I liked him.

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky runs to Nica to attack her, but she manages to get free long enough to block the attack with her legs. Which she can't feel. She back hands him when he can't free the ax.
I think I feel a showdown happening!

#Kissmmatewatches Nica knocks his head off, but that's never enough. He gets back together and pushes her wheelchair off the banister, almost killing her. He then starts to Black-and-White narrate the past to her.

#Kissmmatewatches Charles was a friend of the family. After the father died, he kidnapped the mother and little Barb for his own (creepy). Sarah did everything to keep Chucky from Barb and wait for the police to arrive.

#Kissmmatewatches Charles blames everything on Sarah. Getting caught, dying, betraying his loyalty, etc.
[Ableism]
Oh, and Charles is the reason Nica's disabled.
He stabbed Sarah when she was pregnant with Nica. That was enough to make Nica disabled. There was no reason for this.

#Kissmmatewatches Look, disability in a character is going to be difficult to write for if you're not disabled, but it's something that IS doable!
But no matter what, run your story through a sensitivity reader. You put money in disabled people's hands AND you get a good story!

#Kissmmatewatches A lot of this movie was forgivable because we had a disabled protag who was relatable! But then they tied her disability to the villain's actions.

And it feels kind of OOC for Charles, too. He had a GF, Tiff. He loved her up until he died! This is Tiff erasure!

#Kissmmatewatches In Bride, he laughed at the idea of marriage with a why-buy-the-cow mentality! He didn't even know how to react to kids! He was busy working on becoming an evil white Voodoo user! When the hell did he have time for this bullshit?!

#Kissmmatewatches In fact, he also blamed Eddie, the getaway driver, for his death! Where was he mentioned? Why was he there if Charles was going to be with his "bride" all night?
THERE ARE TOO MANY HOLES IN THIS STORY.

#Kissmmatewatches If Nica was a child who saw him kill, or if he killed the father and Barb witnessed it, that would be much better than this!
I need to stop this and finish the movie. You all get my meaning by now.

#Kissmmatewatches Sorry, one more thing, the captions say he talks in Latin for the chant when it sounds like French. It's just one more fucking thing.

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky keeps talking, mentioning all the other people he's killed and how she's the last. Until she mentions Andy still being alive.
The dialogue here is GREAT. She takes the HATE and ANGER from her mother and sister and THROWS IT IN HIS FACE. I love it.

#Kissmmatewatches She manages to get the knife away from him, but he shows he's dangerous without it too. She stabs him, but you know it's never enough.
The cop hears her screaming and pushes his way in. He sees Nica cowering in the elevator and a bloody knife in her hand.

#Kissmmatewatches Chucky watches from a corner, knowing he's safe. Nica is tried and sent to a psychiatric ward for the criminally insane. She gloats to him that she's alive as she's wheeled out. The cop stares at Chucky, clearly unsettled.

#Kissmmatewatches The cop brings the Chucky doll to his car and makes a call saying he has it. Just as he notices that Chucky is breathing in the back, Tiff cuts his throat from the backseat and takes the doll away to be sent to the next location.

#Kissmmatewatches Alice comes home and calls out to her grandma. Chucky surprises her, but Alice is very happy to see him. He convinces her to play "Hide the Soul". Then we get jumpscared by someone trying to breathe with plastic over their head.

The End.

#Kissmmatewatches They clearly wanted to reboot the series with some new material while trying to remain true to Chucky. Instead, they fucked it all up and gave us a shit movie that is somehow WORSE than Seed.

#Kissmmatewatches Also, what the hell was Tiff doing there? She's credited as Tiff so it's not Tilly. Did Bride happen? Did Seed happen? Are we cherry-picking what we say is canon now? Why is he going into Alice? I thought he liked being a doll! Or at least a cis guy!

#Kissmmatewatches Wait. Chucky said he killed the Barkleys, Kincaids, and Tillys.
Tiff's last name is Valentine.
Did Seed happen and he killed all the Tillys, except for Tiff who now mindlessly follows his every order?
Even though that means killing the twins? Tiff would NEVER!!!

#Kissmmatewatches A trend in the Chucky movies usually has a happy ending. The next film reveals the not-so-happy parts. (EX: Karen is sent to an asylum in 2, Andy is sent to military school in 3)
This one? Nica, our disabled protag, gets sent to an asylum. We see the trial.

#Kissmmatewatches The first time we get a disabled protag and we have to watch her get wheeled off while she hisses that she's still alive.
There's camera footage that can be accessed to boost her case of innocence. CHUCKY KICKED A BUCKET OVER TO KILL JILL. HOW CAN YOU PIN NICA?!

#Kissmmatewatches BARB WAS STABBED IN THE ATTIC! IAN WAS KILLED WITH A POWERFUL AX SWING!
Nica has to fight to get people to understand she can cook a dinner for 6, but suddenly she can overpower 3-4 people in one night while barely getting a scratch on herself? AND THE BALCONY-!

#Kissmmatewatches HOW COULD SHE THROW HERSELF OFF THE BALCONY?!
And she went with the doll story? Nothing about "better lie so I don't look insane in front of a judge"?
I.... I hate this movie.

#Kissmmatewatches I'm going to lay down. I hate this. They did SOME things right, but the climax and ending killed it for me.

2/10, I'm going to take some Advil. Hug a wheelchair user with their permission next time you see one.

@threadreaderapp unroll your heart out