Child’s Play 2 (1990)

Directed by John Lafia. Starring Christine Elise, Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Greg Germann, Grace Zabriskie, Peter Haskell, Beth Grant, (voice) Brad Dourif. [R]

With his mom committed to psychiatric care after no one believed her story about a killer doll, young Andy is put into a foster home in this sequel to the sleeper horror hit. Meanwhile, the leftover bits of the murderous Good Guy doll are examined for defects, which leads to Chucky being revived and then hunting down his former playmate to play “a new game…called ‘Hide the Soul’…and [Andy’s] it!” (Don’t give me that look, he’s the one who said it.) Mostly standard stuff for the first hour, no real surprises, a few darkly funny bits mixed in with the mean-spirited material, but the grisly slasher slayings are on the perfunctory side. However, that’s all warm-up for the climax set in a doll factory for arguably the best sustained sequence the franchise ever produced—malfunctioning machines, conveyor belts, hydraulic presses, severed hands, eye punctures, blasts of molten plastic, the works! Dourif is still up to the malevolent task as Chucky, but it’s a shame that almost all of the human portrayals are so disposable, even bland.

55/100