Dir. Jack Bender (1991)
Chucky follows the now-teenaged Andy to military school.
I lowkey love this film. Child's Play 3 is arguably the weakest film in the series, and while I readily acknowledge that it doesn't bring a whole lot to the table as far as quality goes, it's a hell of a fun ride with a lot of focus on comedy and making an accessible Child's Play film after the first sequel heavily ratcheted up the violence. Where the first film was super dark and the second strived to make a Chucky movie with a few more comic touches, Child's Play 3 made Chucky into the impish neer-do-well that the rest of the series made its bread and butter.
Eight years after the events of the second film, Andy has been placed into a military school to complete his education. To be honest, it seems like a pretty good place for a kid who has bounced around between foster homes after claiming a doll was killing everyone around him. Chucky discovers his location and returns to claim his body, seeking to finally get out of his toy confines and escape into a physical form where he can do even more damage. As the almost-grown Andy seeks help from young classmate Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers in his only film role) to defeat the re-embodied serial killer, Chucky runs rampant through the Kent Military School.
One of the best things about the Child's Play series is that there's a lot more to it than most slasher franchises. Mancini seeks to take aim at various parts of society with each film: the original was all about the dangers of consumerism, while 2 was hugely critical of big business and their focus on profits over people. There are shades of that in this film as well, of course. 3 is much more concerned with toxic masculinity and the military, however, and it's apt critique. There's something to be said about teaching young boys to become men, and that's an incredibly valuable piece of growing up that is often undervalued in society. To do so in such an extreme way, however, focusing more on Draconian rules and punishment for breaking them than on teaching and support, is a huge problem. Teaching our men to be men should have something to do with teaching them to be good men as well, and it should also acknowledge you can be a man without being the toxic, extreme versions that Hollywood has historically based its heroes on. There's a lot more to be said about that than I can cover here, but it's certainly an interesting topic to discuss, and Mancini doesn't shy away from his not-so-subtle commentary.
The previous two Child's Play movies featured Chucky killing people for a purpose, for the most part. There were a few random kills, but most of Chucky's victims were murdered in the furtherance of his goals of getting to Andy and taking his soul, or even for revenge (as mostly seen in the first film). Child's Play 3, however, is all about Charles the man using his doll body to have fun while killing as many people as possible. He still wants to claim either Tyler or Andy, but he kills a bunch of people just because he wants to and for no other reason. You gotta admire that motivation as a slasher villain, and it provides a little extra depth to the character, even if he appears very surface level through most of the film.
Child's Play 3 is not a great movie by any means. The film doesn't seek to be scary hardly at all, and a lot of the intensity of the previous two entries is bypassed for a movie that seeks simply to entertain. This also is not a bad thing, because slasher movies should seek to be entertaining above all else. Yeah, it's great if they have something else to say, but if they don't, it can still be a good, old fashioned bunch of killing to make the fans happy. Child's Play 3 has plenty of that, along with a good bit of humor and some amazingly unlikeable characters that work perfectly in this military boarding school storyline that Mancini has created.
The great thing about slasher movies is that a film doesn't have to be good, by the normal definition of the word, to be enjoyed. This is popcorn fare, the type of film that you love to see in the theaters and then just enjoy talking about with your friends afterwards. The third film in the series is the type of dumb entertainment that makes horror so amazing, that makes the genre a lifelong love affair for anybody that claims the genre as their own. For me, it's a comfort movie, a reminder of why I love horror at all. It's childhood, growing up and being afraid and realizing that there's not all that much to be afraid of. It's funny, well-made, and doesn't seek to be anything more than exactly what it is. And that's enough for me.
Who this movie is for: Slasher fans, Chucky groupies, ROTC members
Bottom line: Child's Play 3 is probably the worst movie in the series, but it's also one of my favorites. It's dumb, genuinely funny, and contains just enough violence to make it a worthwhile horror movie as well. This is one of those childhood movies for me, right along with its direct predecessor, and it still strikes the same chord as it did when I first saw it. If you're looking for quality horror, you may want to look elsewhere, but as a fun slasher movie with some social critique, you could certainly do a lot worse.
