Kids These Days Think Killer Dolls Are For Babies
How has the original Child's Play aged, and what does it suggest about the importance of our childhood toys?
No matter what generation, toys, especially dolls, are a vital part of childhood. Playing with dolls not only gives children the opportunity to play-act in adult roles like parent or teacher, it also gives kids an outlet to express their anxieties. For example, if a kid needs a shot at the doctor, they will go home and give a doll a shot, or play doctor with it. Dolls are extremely important to children’s development, friends that they will keep forever, that will never get mad at them. There’s evidence of dolls from pre-historic times, which is strong evidence for dolls as a constant source of comfort across all generations, cultures, and times. Simply put, dolls are vital to children. It is vital that they can’t respond, or judge, or have real minds of their own. So, given that information, what happens when a doll turns bad?
The evil doll trope is nothing particularly new. Just like there is evidence of dolls in every culture from pre-historic times, there are also many tales from around the world that feature evil, or possessed, dolls. Even if only horror movies with creepy doll-type things are being considered, there are plenty: Annabelle, of the Conjuring universe, Billy the puppet of Saw, and, of course, Chucky. But while evil dolls are nothing new, they need a certain type of environment to flourish. For Child’s Play, that environment turned out to be the extreme paranoia of the Satanic Panic. Child’s Play hit theaters at exactly the right time for it to profit off mass hysteria, leading to a box office profit of $35.2 million ($44.2 million in sales, $9 million budget).
Peggy McMartin Buckey’s trial began in April of 1987. The McMartin preschool trial is the most famous of the satanic panic, a terrifying period of time that is widely known among horror fans. During the McMartin trial, as well as many others of that type, the children involved were asked to play-act what had happened to them on dolls they were given. There was rarely any evidence of the actions these children performed on the dolls anywhere else, but this faulty method of collecting “evidence” led to many people losing their jobs. Child’s Play came out on November 9, 1988, which doesn’t make its success look coincidental.
So if Child’s Play was as successful and scary as it was in 1988 because of its proximity to the McMartin preschool trial, as well as the growing panic around young children, does it hold up to a kid today? Going into watching Child’s Play, I had read as many articles as Fangoria’s website would give me about our favorite killer doll, as well as an essay in the anthology It Came From The Closet. I knew that Chucky was the serial killer Charles Lee Ray, I knew Aunt Maggie was going to die from a fall out of the kitchen window, and that it was, in fact, Chucky that did it. I wasn’t really expecting to be scared by this movie, to be perfectly honest. I thought that because I had Chucky in my head as a very campy villain, he wouldn’t be that scary.
I was very wrong.
Not only is Child’s Play a phenomenal study in tension, it has underlying themes that still ring true today, just maybe for different reasons than in 1988. There were two things that really struck me throughout the movie. The first is the most obvious: that no one would believe Andy. Now, admittedly, it is unreasonable to say that if a child tells you their doll is alive, you should believe them. However, when they tell you that the doll said things that they wouldn’t make up on their own (that Aunt Maggie was a bitch who got what she deserved, for example), maybe you should start thinking about believing them. Also, given what we know about Andy in the beginning of the movie, he’s a sweet kid. He really does try his best to make his mom breakfast in bed on his birthday, and he tries to be nice about how disappointed he is that he didn’t get a Good Guy. Also, because of how badly he wanted that Good Guy, it’s very unlikely that he’d make up a story about it being dangerous knowing that that would get it taken away. But, because he’s a child, no one believes him.
The second reason Child’s Play was far scarier than I thought it would be was that Chucky is a bully, and the worst kind, too. He makes sure that no one will believe Andy, because he doesn’t say anything other than the pre-programmed doll talk when adults are around. Now, this ruse does fall apart when Andy’s mother discovers that Chucky never had batteries, but it lasts for long enough that it gets Andy put in a mental hospital. As someone who grew up with bullies of this type, this aspect of the movie really hit home for me in a terrifying way.
The third piece of Child’s Play that makes it so scary is its main concept - that of a doll turning evil. As established, dolls are vital to children’s development. Therefore, the consequences of a situation like this one must be detrimental. I haven’t seen the later movies, so I don’t know the fate of Andy Barclay’s childhood as it is, but I can theorize. First, it is highly unlikely that Andy will ever play with dolls again. After the Chucky incident, he knows that dolls can be dangerous, and will lose that important part of his childhood. Second, it is similarly unlikely that Andy will be good at trusting people again. Almost every single person in the movie who was supposed to keep Andy safe only ended up putting him in even more danger, which does not bode well for his future trust in people.
The final thing I want to focus on is the look Andy gives the doll as the credits roll. It is a look that is hauntingly familiar to the genre. Much like the final shot of Laurie in Halloween, it is one of dread. After having seen the doll blown to bits but still moving, Andy knows that this evil doesn’t go easy. He has become chained to a life of wondering if there’s a knife-wielding doll just around the next corner at only six years old. We, as a modern audience, know that Chucky does come back for Andy. But even if he didn’t, Andy would always be waiting, and knowing that no one would believe him if he told. This is a child that has been absolutely destroyed by events he could not control.
Since 1988, Child’s Play has become an empire, with Chucky at its head, and for good reason. The scares of the original hold true, even with all the spoilers possible. The look on little Andy Barclay’s face as he turns back to look at the dismembered doll before the credits roll is a phenomenal, haunting, scene of a childhood lost. And, though I thought I was too old to be scared of my toys coming to life, the scene leading up to Aunt Maggie’s death made me so paranoid that I avoided our kitchen entirely when I was home alone in the evening for a good couple of days. A true classic really does never go out of style.