The Correct Order To Watch The Chucky Movies
Tom Holland's 1988 film "Child's Play" was initially meant to be a satire of the commercial madness that swept the world when Cabbage Patch Kids proliferated through the marketplace a few years before. What if, "Child's Play" asked, the soul of a vicious serial killer possessed your ultra-hot Christmas toy? The result was a genuinely creepy supernatural thriller about a young boy named Andy (Alex Vincent) his single mom (Catherine Hicks) and the mysterious Good Guy doll who likely contains the personality of Charles Lee "Chucky" Ray (Brad Dourif), known to the police as the Lakeshore Strangler.
Like many of the slasher films of the 1980s, "Child's Play" was extensively sequelized. The mythos of Chucky the killer doll expanded, leading to strange byzantine rules of voodoo magic (Chucky uses a magical amulet and magic spells to shunt his soul into a doll body), as well as inter-doll mating, and a lot of queerness. At the end of the series' fourth film, Chucky and his doll bride Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) have a weird organic doll child who alternately goes by the names Glen or Glenda (or GG if you consider the series), and who is nonbinary. The most recent "Child's Play" movie was released in 2017, and also prominently featured a queer couple. The whole "Child's Play" phenomenon — its origins and its meaning — was examined in a pretty good 2022 documentary called "Living with Chucky."
There is currently a spinoff TV series called "Chucky" airing on Syfy, and it takes place in the same continuity as the movies. In 1993, 2014, and 2019, there were remakes of "Child's Play" that exist in their own continuities. All told, there are ten "Child's Play" movies. Here's how to watch them:
The release order
Here are the nine films in order:
- "Child's Play" (1988)
- "Child's Play 2" (1990)
- "Child's Play 3" (1991)
- "Zapatlela" (1993)
- "Bride of Chucky" (1998)
- "Seed of Chucky" (2004)
- "Curse of Chucky" (2013)
- "Zapatlela 2" (2013)
- "Cult of Chucky" (2017)
- "Child's Play" (2019)
The first three films in the series were all straightforward horror films, and all followed the relationship between the killer doll Chucky and Andy, the young boy from the first film. By "Child's Play 3," Andy is a teenager attending a military academy. Starting with "Bride of Chucky," the series took a turn toward comedy, turning the horror into something a little more slapstick. Chucky and his bride Tiffany — whose soul he shunted into a doll out of spite — became the main characters, and the films became snarky and self-aware in the "Scream" mold. The 2013 "Curse of Chucky" saw the series movie to home video, and shifted the tone slightly back toward horror. "Cult of Chucky" introduced the notion that Chucky's soul could be trifurcated, and he stalked victims from several doll bodies simultaneously.
The Syfy TV series takes place after "Cult of Chucky."
The 2019 remake was again about Andy (Gabriel Bateman) and his mom (Aubrey Plaza), but the doll was now named Buddi (Mark Hamill) and was not possessed by a serial killer. In the remake, Buddi was an artificially intelligent toy that had its safety protocols removed by a bitter sweatshop employee. Buddi, wanting to protect Andy from harm, became murderous and possessive. It was a clever update to the "Child's Play" material.
Wait, there was a Marathi-language remake?
Less well-known, even to Chucky's hardcore fans, are the two "Child's Play" remakes produced in India and presented in the Marathi language. In writer/director Mahesh Kothare's "Zapatlela," serial killer Charles Lee Ray was reimagined as a dangerous gangster named Tatya Vinchu (Dilip Prabhavalkar) who is killed in a post-office shootout. Tatya Vinchu, with his dying breath, uses a spell to put his soul into a purple-hued ventriloquist dummy. The dummy finds its way into the possession of Laksya (Laxmikant Berde) an aspiring ventriloquist. One of the conceits of the original "Child's Play," was that the living doll could only shunt his soul into the human he first revealed himself to. In "Child's Play," it was Andy. In "Zapatlela," it's Laksya.
The film ends with a rooftop fight (natch), and Laksya barely escapes with his life. After the events of the film, Laksya gives up on ventriloquism.
"Zapatlela" also had a sequel. In 2013, Kothare made "Zapalela 2," a film in 3D. The story this time saw one of Tatya Vinchu's gangster sidekicks reviving the dead killer doll for the express purpose of locating a stash of stolen diamonds. Naturally, the resurrection will lead to Tatya Vinchu going on a killing spree again. The film starred Adinath Kothare, the director's son, (and four-time selection as one of the Most Desirable Men of Maharashtra) as Anditye Bolke, the son of Laksya from the original. "Zapatlela 2" climaxes with a chase of the side of a Ferris wheel, which is vaguely reminiscent of the amusement park climax of "Child's Play 3."
One can see the "Zapatlela" movies on the Indian streaming service Zee5. They may be obscure in the United States, but they seem to be a must for "Child's Play" fans.