Child's Play 2
Sorry Jack... Chucky's back!
Year of Release: 1990
Genre: Horror
Rated: R
Running Time: 84 minutes (1:24)
Director: John Lafia
Cast:
Alex Vincent ... Andy Barclay
Jenny Agutter ... Joanne Simpson
Gerrit Graham ... Phil Simpson
Christine Elise ... Kyle
Brad Dourif ... Chucky (voice)
Grace Zabriskie ... Grace Poole
Don Mancini ... Guy in office hallway (uncredited)
Summary:
Chucky's back! The notorious killer doll with the satanic smile comes back to life in this new chapter depicting the terrifying struggle between young Andy Barclay and the demonic doll attempting to possess his soul.
Despite being roasted to a crisp in his last escapade, Chucky rises from the ashes after being reconstructed by a toy factory to dispel the negative publicity surrounding the doll.
Back in one piece, Chucky tracks his prey to a foster home where the chase begins again in this fiendishly clever sequel to the enormously popular original.
Review:
Child's Play 2, remindin' us to expect waves if you're gonna take up body surfing.
And speakin' of atypical salt content, I dunno about you, but I'm startin' to worry about the guy writin' the scripts for Season 163 of Chickawalka County At Large, 'cause when ya go from bein' the toast of the town one week to rootin' around the sewer lookin' for the brain-damaged lap dogs of distraught lesbians the next, it seems like maybe someone's havin' trouble payin' for their Haldol prescription.
I don't mean to be negative, but there're times when bein' hopelessly wrapped around the finger of a woman (and by extension, her chemically imbalanced wife) is damned inconvenient, and one of the worst is when you're mere moments away from claimin' the high score on the BurgerTime cabinet at the Gutter Bowl.
"There they are! Please, you've gotta come quick, Priscilla's--" Mrs. Sadie squawked as she cleared the distance between the arcade entrance and my one shot at immortality; spinnin' me around in what shoulda been my moment of glory.
"FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU..." I howled, whirlin' back around to find myself pincered between Mr. Hot Dog and Mr. Egg with nowhere to run.
"It's Pricilla, she's--" she started to say, plainly unmoved by the existential crisis she'd created.
"ONE MORE LOUSY BUN!" I screamed, collapsin' to the floor and buryin' my face in the carpet.
"Looks like you've got a matching set from here. Now get it together, we haven't got time for this," Sadie snapped, inspectin' her watch but allowing me another moment to grieve in spite of her apparent urgency.
"Right, of course. How rude of me. Wouldn't wanna keep you waiting. I mean, it's not like I'VE been waiting 37 years to top the chart on this son of a--" I began to ramble before Sadie nudged her missus who proceeded to whip out 'er tube top torpedoes.
"What was I... Sadie? When did you get here? And who turned out the lights?" I squinted, tryna reorient myself after Mrs. Sadie's sweater getters'd blocked out every source of light in the room.
"Sorry to hafta do that, but we've got a big goddamn problem," Sadie replied, yankin' me back to my feet while I was still able to stand up without causin' permanent damage to my reproductive system.
"I fee no pwoblem," Billy slurred, wipin' the newly formed sweat from his brow.
"Come on, I'll explain on the way," Mrs. Sadie instructed, tuckin' 'er atomic duffle bags back into the luggage compartment.
"Sadie, did she ever flash 'er things at me before?!" I demanded after gettin' a quick look at my initials in the #2 position of the BurgerTime high score list and beginnin' to recover from my missing time experience.
"God you're pathetic," Sadie sneered, grabbin' Billy and me by our wrists before we'd regained complete control of our motor function.
Once Billy and I were able to accept data input again, Mrs. Sadie explained that they'd been walkin' Priscilla near the Prime Creek theater when a half-eaten bag of popcorn blew by and the little runt went dashin' after it. From what I could make out between hysterical sobs, the bag musta rolled down a storm drain, and I guess the rotten little mutt jerked the leash out of 'er hand, allowin' it to dive down the opening after it. I was also able to surmise that this was somehow my problem.
"Ya know, for a coupla chicks who've sworn off men, you sure need men a lot," I grumbled, the effects of Mrs. Sadie's enchanted breast enhancements having finally worn off.
"I don't need YOU. I need help gettin' down the manhole - I haven't got the right tool," she growled, blowin' the Ramcharger's horn at Dale Whelchel's Dodge Warlock where he was stopped in the middle of Wicker Street talkin' to Wily Krantz about how the Stalkas baseball team didn't stand a chance against Sluicestank High 'cause our boys got no discipline these days, let alone hustle.
"Call it mansplainin' if you want, but they make artificial ones made outta--" I was sayin' before havin' to duck to avoid the ice scratcher Sadie keeps under 'er seat.
"I gah one," Billy offered.
"Why'n hell have you got a manhole cover puller?" I asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Why *dohn* you have one?" he replied, equally surprised.
"Yeah... why *don't* I have one? Can you just buy 'em at Hammer Time, or--" I was about to ask when Sadie fishtailed around and gunned back toward Billy's place.
Took us about 45 minutes to find it and by that time the sun'd gone down; not that it matters much when you're colonoscopizin' the city's poop chute, I guess. But once Billy'd removed the cover we realized Sadie and I were gonna be the only ones that could fit without takin' a roll of duct tape and mummifyin' the mammaries of her missues, and so down the ladder we went.
"Don't say I never take ya anywhere nice," I winked, lightin' my tiki torch.
"I've got a flashlight, why did you bring that stupid--" she began to chide.
"Grues will not displace us!" I hollered, raising the torch and accidentally igniting a gigantic spider web.
"Can it, assface, I can't hear anything over you reaffirming my sexual orientation," she barked, before pausing to whistle for the dog.
"I doubt you wanna hear anything that might be goin' on down here," I observed, pointin' my torch toward a stack of moldy porno and a soggy cot.
"Jesus, is somebody squatting down here?" she muttered, stopping to examine the ashes of a pallet fire.
"Mutant babies, cosmic horror clowns, middle-aged mutant ninja turtles? Gotta be somethin' like that. At least my C.H.U.D. insurance is paid up," I remarked as a whimper echoed around the corner.
"Priscilla?!" Sadie yelled, rounding the corner to find what appeared to be a mound of refuse holding the dog.
"You really should've called first, the place is a mess," a familiar voice scolded.
"That's my dog. Give her to me, please," Sadie managed, the diamond pattern of her Maglite handle digging into her palm.
"Why? She likes me. Don't you, little pup-- OW! Hostile little bitch," the shape snarled.
"Fraggle, does Creedence Mack know you're down here destroyin' the feng shui of the Chickawalka County sewer system?" I asked, inspecting the Aimless 20-Something Chic aesthetic he'd built with the aid of Monster Energy Drink empties and Pop Tart foil.
"Fraggle? I'm gettin' All-Knowing Trash Heap vibes," Sadie observed, covering her nose with her sleeve.
"She threw me out! Said I have no ambition and that I refuse to grow up," he sulked.
"Nothing new there," I said, putting some distance between myself and his five-gallon restroom.
"Right?! She just doesn't understand me anymore. She'll be sorry when my disability claim comes through," he smirked, pullin' a mushy plum out of his pocket.
"Bad news, dude, they never pay out on those Nintendonitis claims, trust me," I sympathized.
"Whatever. So, what's she worth to ya?" he grinned, holding Priscilla aloft after having tied her jaws shut with a Slim Jim wrapper.
"What's your life worth to you?" Sadie growled, negotiating the latrine and takin' a couple steps toward him.
"Squat!" he sulked, rarin' back to throw the dog before thinkin' better of it.
"Look, things don't hafta be like this. Tell ya what - you give Sadie the... 'dog', and I promise I'll getcha housed and fed in under an hour," I insisted, tryna figure out whether I'd stepped in individually packaged mayonnaise or somethin' I'd prefer not to mention.
"Fine. Take her. Hardly any meat on 'er anyway," he grumbled before releasing Priscilla.
"One hour, time me," I grinned.
"Yeah, sure. By the way, unless you chucklefucks're dead set on takin' the scenic route, the grate's off the culvert down the tunnel there," he pointed toward the drainage exit where a shaft of street light could be seen faintly glowing.
Profanity really carries down in those tunnels, just in case anyone's ever wondered.
Anyhow, true to my word (lacking in good intentions though they were), we met up with Billy and the missus and drove on over to Creedence's place where I gave her Fraggle's exact location and informed her that the president had been right all along about the pet consumption epidemic (if not the nationality of those responsible). After which, we motored back on over to the drainage to watch her drag him out, make 'im pledge allegiance to the goddess Veggo-coatl, force 'im to eat half a bag of lawn clippins, and, eventually, give 'im a Vegan enema.
I just love a happy ending, don't you?
Mrs. Sadie was so excited to be reunited with Priscilla, the High Score Killa, that she sprung for Jiffy Mart burritos and made it through two whole flicks in our Child's Play marathon before decidin' to stick her canis anus in the kitchen sink to scrub off the stench of wasted potential and recycled toilet paper.
It's been a LONG time since we checked in with Chuck and I apologize for that, but I'm sure most of ya can recite half the dialogue in this flick without any help from me anyhow so there's no reason to get uppity about it. Child's Play 2 came out during what I refer to as Universal's mid-life crisis, where they were tryna recapture their youth by buyin' up the rights to every horror franchise they could get their mitts on to reestablish themselves as genre players, and the Child's Play series would end up becomin' their biggest and longest running success.
Kind of a gutsy move considering the downward trajectory (in terms of mainstream popularity, I mean) that the genre was on in the early '90s, but Universal could feel the winds of change comin' and decided to pivot away from straight horror and give Chucky a personality more akin to a Freddy Krueger, and damned if it didn't work. This first sequel is what you'd hafta consider Chucky's awkward teenage years, and just as he sought to learn about his place in the universe, so too did we learn from him, and it is from these observations that I present to you the following snippets of formative year info from one of the legends of genre film.
First, never tell your inner-most secrets to anyone you can't afford to kill. Second, buryin' a ginger in a shallow grave will always come back to haunt you. And third, automation will eventually displace us all, though the process will be expedited exponentially should you crawl underneath the assembly line eyeball socketer.
The movie begins with Chucky's charred remains bein' carted into Good Guys headquarters for a latex graft and full body makeover like he's at a resort spa for recently divorced dolls tryna make themselves presentable for their high school reunions, only when the CEO shows up to be filled in on the damage control operation the eyeball implantin' machine goes haywire and sends its operator flyin' through a plate glass window after a round of supernatural shock treatment. Elsewhere, Andy's mom's been locked up in the quack shack for havin' the kid's back, and so he ends up in the foster system with the American Werewolf in London's girlfriend (Jenny Agutter) and Bud the C.H.U.D. (Gerrit Graham) who take 'im to live in the suburbs where the scariest thing that ever happens is the real estate lady occasionally showin' an adjoining property to a Black couple. Next thing, the human embodiment of a rectal thermometer that arranged the full body transplant for the severed head of a Billy Mumy action figure unceremoniously pitches Chucky into his backseat where he just about gets hosed down by one of the recalled Betsy Wetsy's that're stacked up back there. Chuck is not amused, so he grabs a water pistol off the floor and forces the guy to put his hands behind the seat so he can tie his wrists together with a jump rope and give 'im the double dutch oven by stuffin' a bag over the yes-man's head and smotherin' 'im with his butt-kissin' breath. Then Chuck gets on the horn and starts makin' phone calls tryna locate his meat suit and gets Jenny and Gerrit's address from the orphan rancher who sees nothin' wrong with passin' out at-risk children's whereabouts to strange men who call in the middle of the night, and so Chuck heads on over to Andy's new digs and dispatches the resident Good Guy doll and buries it in the backyard so he can take its place like a Fisher-Price Changeling.
The next night, Chuck ties Andy up while he's asleep and tries takin' his chassis for a test drive and dang near pulls it off except Andy's foster sister (Kyle) gets caught sneakin' in his window after curfew, at which time Andy presents his case for the death penalty to the judicial branch but is only able to secure a restraining order when Gerrit pitches Chucky down the basement steps and ruins his brand new nose job. The next mornin', Chuck grabs onto the school bus's drive shaft and goes to work perfectin' his horizontal bar routine as it's haulin' Andy to class, and while the kids're at recess he adds some literary flair to Andy's classwork that fails to charm the marm and leaves 'er with no choice but to hold 'im after class for additional tutelage concerning the proper use of the Oxford comma. In addition, she decrees the lecture be one-on-one, so before she goes to snitch to the principal she tosses Chuck in the supply closet, and, needless to say, he is not pleased by the woke, preferential treatment being shown to students coming from broken homes, and goes completely apeshit tryna bust outta the closet to demand receipts proving all the supplies came outta the bitch's own pocket and not from his tax dollars. There's no reasonin' with 'im when he gets like this, so Andy bails out the window and by the time the teacher comes back the only signs of life are noises that sound like two Grizzly bears tryna have sex in the closet, and when she opens the door Chuck tries an experimental breast enlargement procedure with the aid of a basketball pump and beats 'er to death with a yard stick for bein' a tool of the Imperialist measurement system.
By this point Andy's new parents're tryna find the receipt so they can take 'im back to the pound and exchange 'im, so he figures he's got nothin' to lose and heads down into the basement with an electric carvin' knife to render up a few pounds of ground Chuck, only before he can do that Gerrit comes to investigate the source of the ruckus, and when he goes to descend the staircase Chuck trips 'im up with a fire poker and the poor bastard ends up takin' a Burning Hammer on the concrete floor. As he's bein' hauled away by the CPS goons, Andy warns Kyle that Chuck's still downstairs playin' cellar dweller, so just to be on the safe side she decides to make Chuck a reservation at the Landfill Inn, but when she hops on the backyard swing she dredges up the shallow grave of the original Good Guy doll and gets this look on 'er face like she just realized she ran 'er Bon Jovi tickets through the wash. She heads upstairs to check on Jenny but by the time she gets there she's been strangled mid-hem at 'er sewin' machine, and when Kyle sits down on the bed to take in the scene she gets jumped by a freak in the sheets and forced to drive to the orphanage because the American auto industry hasn't put forth the effort to meet the needs of drivers who stand 2' 3". As you can imagine, Chuck's gettin' just a teensy bit irritated given that his lease's about to expire and he still hasn't managed to secure a permanent residence, but he ends up snappin' at Kyle one time too many, and when he tells 'er to floor it she complies and sends 'im through the windshield. Far as she's concerned he got what he deserved for refusin' to sit in the booster seat in accordance with federal guidelines, but Chuck doesn't see it that way, and after she tries runnin' 'im over it takes every ounce of self control he's got not to turn 'er neck into a Cribbage board when the Bimbonic Plague compels 'er to get outta the car to look for 'im instead of drivin' off.
From there, they cruise on over to the orphanage and pull the fire alarm to filter out all the unsuitable hosts, 'cept then the loaner mom who runs the place gets pissy and Chuck hasta cut 'er down to size and run off a couple hundred photo copies of 'er death rictus before grabbin' Andy and stowin' away with the morning edition. Kyle gives chase in 'er Taurus station wagon but the delivery guy's takin' his oath to the Chairman of the Board way too seriously and refuses to stop spreadin' the news until she forces 'im off the road, only to find Anus and Andy've already vacated the van and hoofed it into the nightmare fuel assembly plant. Once inside the Opie Taylor testing grounds, Chuck clubs Andy's skull and starts recitin' devil haiku until it looks like the title transfer's about to go through, but at the last minute the voodoo electrical storm breaks up because some guy in the afterlife bureaucracy refused to sign off on the merger and condemned 'im to an eternity of agonizing tea parties with bossy little girls dressed in their Sunday best. Chuck is P.O.'d, and with his exit strategy effectively cut off there's no reason to keep the kid alive, but when he goes to cap Andy, Kyle shows up behind a display and buries Chuck in an avalanche of plastic Ed Sheerans from which he emerges red-eyed and ready to take out the world. Questionable decisions aside, this one's got a pretty suspenseful climax where even when you think Chuck's dead he's not, and when you think he's dead again he's still not - but I don't wanna give away anymore so I'm gonna shut my yap right now and let the final act speak for itself. These two have made nuisances of themselves long enough, and having Chucked around, it's high time they found out.
Alrighty, well, I suppose it would be naive to assume that the follow-up to Child's Play could bypass the trend of increased comedy in an era where the genre had become over-saturated and its audience a bit jaded. Thankfully, the creative vision of Don Mancini and the voice talents of Brad Dourif were up to the task, and the result is a franchise that (for a time) maintained its edge while establishing what was to become the second greatest wise-ass villain in genre history.
It's debatable as to whether this was good for the genre long term, but by the end of the '80s even the most popular franchises either evolved to include more laughs (Evil Dead II, Chainsaw 2, Nightmare on Elm Street 3) or found themselves temporarily shelved (Friday the 13th, Halloween) if they lacked the kind of complex villain that could be rehabilitated to fit the modern framework. Many of us who were there since the beginning would say the Child's Play flicks have lost their way (though there will never be a consensus regarding when it happened), and although I often advocate for minimal comedy, there's really no question that the personality bestowed upon Chucky in this sequel endeared him to the audience and made him more marketable for future sequels. I personally don't believe the balance between horror and comedy tipped too far in favor of laughs until Bride of Chucky, and that even then the comedy is strong enough to hold it together... Seed of Chucky, however, was a bridge too far.
Initially, Catherine Hicks was set to return for a prologue in which Andy's case would be brought before a court, resulting in the judge finding her mentally unstable and remanding Andy into foster care until such time that she was found fit to regain custody. This sequence was eventually cut from the script for budgetary concerns, but while intriguing, it probably would have been tonally inconsistent to have a heart-wrenching court drama unfold in the same flick where a plastic doll shatters a car windshield following an aggressive brake-check.
Ultimately, it's not easy to make a movie about a killer doll, and harder still to make one capable of holding the audience in rapt attention. Mancini, Lafia, and Holland were able to do it once, but whether lightning could have struck twice is questionable. In truth, none of the sequels can match the magic of the original, but I will grudgingly admit that they made the right decision to take Chucky down the path of Freddy Krueger because there's only so many times you can watch a grown-ass adult wrestle with a doll before you start to laugh at the movie rather than with it, and there's no coming back from that.
Anyhow, let's go ahead and pause the Good Guys assembly line a minute while we inspect the parts and pieces for craftsmanship and see if if this thing's greater than the sum of 'em.
The plot suffers from a few moments of horror logic that are downright baffling, if sometimes necessary to advance the story; the most egregious being the decision by the Play Pals corporation to recover the doll and rebuild it from scratch. Recovering it to protect themselves from further liability and to try to uncover what may have gone wrong to address the public relations nightmare is perfectly reasonable, but reconstructing is not necessary or logical unless maybe your CEO's a connoisseur of urban legends and wants to take it home to place on his mantle next to the skeleton of an alligator alleged to have been fished from a sewer or somethin'. Christine Elise getting out of the car after sending Chucky through the windshield rather than continuing on to collect Andy is another instance of rampant stupidity applied to an otherwise likable character, and the worst part is that it seems to have been done in service of getting that scene on the screen despite itself being totally implausible unless Chucky's got more metal in his face than the front row at a Misfits concert. The foster care management simply giving up confidential information to a random caller claiming to be a relative of one of her wards probably falls somewhere between the two aforementioned examples of sloppy writing, but by now I'm sure you can see that there was a little glossing over of reality necessary to tell the story they wanted to tell, and these are all issues that are tough to overlook.
I don't wanna be too hard on it because it is well paced and features a strong, suspenseful third act - I'm just sayin' you may wanna slip your waders on if you're gonna examine the story very closely, 'cause there's some pretty thick bullstuff to slog through.
The acting is competent, with good genre casting that includes Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham as the one-dimensional but likable foster parents, and a returning Brad Dourif who brings profanity-laced enthusiasm to our favorite snarling ginger. Always good to see Agutter and Graham, though it does feel a bit strange for them to pop up in these mundane domestic roles that could have been filled by just about anyone after their work in gonzo flicks like Logan's Run and The Survivor (Agutter), and Phantom of the Paradise, TerrorVision, and C.H.U.D. II. Kinda like watchin' the guys from KISS do yard work, ya know? Additionally, Alex Vincent's acting prowess has improved a bit from his performance in the first flick, and Christine Elise is likable (if not exactly age appropriate) and suitably sarcastic as the cynical elder sister being shuffled from home to home, but ultimately its Brad we're all here for, right? If f-bombs could kill the human race woulda been wiped from the face of the planet after this one, and while Chucky's intensity has been toned down ever so slightly in relation to the first film, Dourif wasn't born with a B-game, and it is he that keeps us coming back year after year, sequel after sequel, to marvel at how a guy can continuously keep us invested in a series of films about the soul of a serial killer trapped in a doll. The man is so good that his anguished cries actually make you feel sympathy for Chucky as he's subjected to increasingly brutal pushback from his would be victims - just an absolute legend. Solid acting all around even if Agutter and Graham are underutilized.
Here's who matters and why (besides Brad Dourif 'cause I'm sure everyone remembers him from that time he was on WCW Monday Nitro): Alex Vincent (Child's Play 1988, Curse of Chucky, Cult of Chucky, Dead Country House Guest Massacre), Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run, The Avengers, An American Werewolf in London, The Magic Door, Darkman, Dark Tower, The Survivor), Gerrit Graham (TerrorVision, Phantom of the Paradise, Demon Seed, The Wasp Woman 1996, Philadelphia Experiment II, Martians Go Home, Big Man on Campus, It's Alive III, Ratboy, Chopping Mall, C.H.U.D. II, The Creature Wasn't Nice, Strange New World, Beware! The Blob), Christine Elise (Cult of Chucky, Escape from Mars, Body Snatchers), Grace Zabriske (The Grudge, The Glow, They Crawl, Home the Horror Story, Armegeddon, The Devil's Child, Blood Ties, Servants of Twilight, Galaxy of Terror, Polaroid, Pulse Bounders, Brothel, Megaville), Peter Haskell (Robot Wars, Child's Play 3), Beth Grant (Donnie Darko, Grave Intentions, Willy's Wonderland, The Labyrinth 2017, Domain, The House of Usher 2006, The Dark Half, Flatliners), Greg Germann (Quarantine 2008), Raymond Singer (Star Trek IV, The Entity), Stuart Mabray (Death Becomes Her), Matt Roe (The Unborn, Puppet Master), Herbie Braha (The Howling, The Lord of the Rings 1978, Vampire 1979), Don Pugsley (Near Dark, The Revenant, Dinocroc, Watchers II, Cry Wilderness), Ed Krieger (Return of the Living Dead, Alien Nation), Edan Gross (Mikey, Child's Play 3), Adam Ryen (Stepfather 3), Adam Wylie (Return to Sleepaway Camp, Species 4, Flying Virus, Children of the Corn 5), Billy Stevenson (Outbreak, The Sleeping Car).
And the mainstream dabblers: Jenny Agutter (Julienne on Call the Midwife), Gerrit Graham (Jeff in Used Cars, and the voice of Franklin Sherman on The Critic), Christine Elise (Harper Tracy on E.R., Emily Valentine on Beverly Hills 90210), Grace Zabriske (Lois Henrickson on Big Love, Sarah Palmer on Twin Peaks), Peter Haskell (Lloyd Kendall on Search for Tomorrow, Kevin Grant on Bracken's World), Beth Grant (Helen in Speed, Sister Catherine in Words on Bathroom Walls, Beverly on The Mindy Project, Jo Ann in Crazy Heart), Greg Germann (Dr. Thomas Koracick on Grey's Anatomy, Rico Moyer on Ned and Stacey, Richard Fish on Ally McBeal), Adam Wylie (Brock on Picket Fences), Billy Stevenson (Pete Fonataine on Suddenly Susan).
The special effects are even better than those of the first film due to the amazing animation and puppeteering of a dozen or so crewmembers whose talents and design improvements allowed for more realistic movement and seamless audio sync with Dourif's voice acting, and these folks are the unsung heroes where it concerns the longevity of the series because they are as responsible for bringing Chucky's signature personality to life as Dourif even if they may not receive proper credit. The gore effects, on the other hand, aren't especially elaborate or memorable due to the MPAA's ongoing crusade to save our souls, but what we do get is a little chintzy, as some of the blood (particularly when smeared) ranges from thick and paintlike to exceedingly juicy and somewhat clear in tint. Additionally, the stuntman crashing through the plate glass window is great; the cheesy electrical current is endearing and typical of the time; the composite shot with the ritual-induced cloud swelling is decent; and the various gooey demises of Chucky are top notch. So, to summarize, the most consequential effects are superb, while some of the less significant ones, such as the blood formula, occasionally miss the mark.
The shooting locations are generally appropriate, but don't quite pass the smell test with Pasadena and L.A. standing in for Chicago. This is an instance where I feel it is fair to compare (within reason) the locations to those of its predecessor because they are set in roughly the same area, and while it is not fair to compare the house in the suburbs to locations in the first flick, everything else is fair game, and most of the areas utilized for this sequel lack the overall gloom and general filth of the first film. That's not to say that the orphanage exteriors, liquor store, or school grounds fail as representations of what they're supposed to be, rather, they just feel a bit incongruent with those of the original. Tonally, it's a film that lacks the dark and sinister atmosphere of its progenitor, and in that regard the suburban neighborhood fits perfectly into the narrative - it just doesn't feel like Chicago or, sometimes, even a large population center at all, and that's including factors like the weather. It's a little difficult to explain, but it's not that the locations are bad, rather, they seem wrong.
The one bright spot is the Good Guys factory, which was built inside an abandoned warehouse in Long Beach and is convincing as an authentic assembly line due to the phenomenal production design and cinematography that lay it all out in detail, in addition to a script that makes a point of setting sequences that utilize the various stages of assembly... even if the dolls don't quite look like the traditional Good Guy (and perhaps they're not even meant to, as any real plant would likely produce numerous different products). Generally speaking, the locations are fine - they just don't quite mesh with those of the original film the way they should.
The soundtrack is a fully orchestral, grandiose composition that frequently takes center stage as the driving force propelling the action forward, but which always seems to come across as integral without ever feeling self indulgent. It's loud, boisterous, and yet, oddly essential. Unlike the first film, much of the action takes place during daylight hours, and the fact is that it's just tougher to build tension and atmosphere under these conditions. Graeme Revell's score does an excellent job of picking up the slack that would otherwise be bore by dark, spooky locations, and creating a level of tension and suspense (particularly during the climax) that draws the audience in and injects more than enough mood to compensate for what might otherwise be missing as a result of setting.
Revell had never composed a score with an orchestra before and lied about it in order to secure the job, though I can't imagine the guy who was supposed to be checkin' references ever got reprimanded after the fact given how well his music ended up fitting into the film, as it is absolutely fantastic and features tremendous range rather than a single catchy, melodic tune reedited several times over. Revell would go on to produce soundtracks for Psycho IV, Boxing Helena, Ghost in the Machine, The Crow, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Idle Hands, and returned to the series in 1997 to score Bride of Chucky, but his score for Child's Play 2 remains a favorite to this day.
Overall, the plot problems drag it down, but it's still well within passing range in terms of both production and entertainment value, and it remains the best sequel at a time when the franchise has reached seven films and spawned a TV series. Mandatory viewing for all genre fans regardless of age, subgenre preference, or chemical composition, and if for some reason you have neglected the series there's no time like the present to correct that. I will only personally vouch for the Parts 1 - 4, however, any psychological injuries sustained while viewing subsequent entries are entirely on you.
Rating: 81%