WARNING, this article contains spoilers! Taking place in a psychiatric hospital, “The Return of Chucky” allows Don Mancini to pay homage to certain influences such as “Shock Corridor” and “Shutter Island”. With the seventh opus of the saga, the creator of the murderous doll can also finally materialize a brilliant idea born more than 20 years earlier.
Return of Chucky : panic at the asylum
In 2017, almost 30 years after the start of the saga, Don Mancini offers a new massacre to his beloved doll. Seventh installment in the franchise and third installment directed by the creator of the demonic toy after Chucky’s Son and Curse of Chucky, Return of Chucky takes place in Harrogate Psychiatric Hospital. A way for the director to invest a troubled and disturbing environment where Chucky (Brad Dourif) can go wild, and to pay homage to several references like Shock Corridor, Shutter Island or The Claws of Nightmare.
Four years after her encounter with the doll possessed by the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) has therefore been held responsible for the murders of her family members. Interned, she’s sure she’s guilty and tries to convince himself that Chucky was just a manifestation of his psychological disorders. To treat her, Doctor Foley (Michael Therriault) has the very bad idea of confronting her with a Good Guys toy. Strangely, the killing resumes…
The crazier we are…
In addition to Chucky and Nica, the film also marks the return of several key characters from the saga such as Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), Andy (Alex Vincent) and Kyle (Christine Elise). The feature film still bears witness to Don Mancini’s desire to keep his monster alive and everything that surrounds him, trying to renew himself with each project and working with people he appreciates. For the release of season 2 of the series chuckythe director and screenwriter tells us in October 2022:
I love Chucky, I love all the characters, I love the actors, I love the people who worked on it for years. It’s like a family. And we’ve always been able to reinvent the franchise. For movies, we wanted a different flavor each time. (…) I never stop thinking about “Chucky”, I have tons of ideas.
Don Mancini has moreover had to be patient to realize some ideas. At the end of Return of Chucky, a trio of murderous dolls appear. The confrontation between several killer toys is an adventure that the creator wanted to integrate for more than 20 years, as he explains to Collider in 2017:
It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I didn’t really know how to integrate it dramatically, I just knew the image of a Chucky tape was cool. I felt at this point in the franchise it was time to do it. It was time to come up with something really new, to take it to another level.
An abandoned idea Chucky 3
The sequence in question is not easy to shoot for the puppeteers, who are inspired above all by the dialogues of Brad Dourif recorded in advance to animate the dolls. And in this case, Don Mancini kept rewriting them right up to the time of the shots, which somewhat complicated their work.
Originally, the creator thought to multiply the dolls from Chucky 3, released in 1991 and directed by Jack Bender. In the conclusion of the second installment, the object haunted by Charles Lee Ray dies in an abandoned toy factory. But when it reopens, the killer’s still-fresh blood flows into the materials of a new “Good Guy.” Don Mancini initially wanted the blood to contaminate several dolls, but that would have complicated the plot centered in the Kent military school.
Andy, for example, would never have been able to convince his comrades of Chucky’s existence if there had been several toys, one of which could feign innocence while the others would have had a blast. Finally, Don Mancini did well to wait since he now has an army of Chucky at his disposal in the series, which gives jubilant scenes.
