34 years have passed since ‘Muñeco diabolico’ (1988) began to satirize the horror genre, with a possessed piece of plastic that has overcome all the tropes and subgenres that its creator, Don Mancini, you have had time to imagine. For season 2 of SYFY’s ‘Chucky’ series, the creator dives deep into religion and has no restraint in playing with the conventions and authority figures of the church.
In this new group of chapters, the tone of suspense contained in the first films that was replicated in some of the episodes of the previous season is broken to return to the most unpredictable and wild saga zone. ‘Chucky’ works well as a television series because for years with the movies they have already set the precedent of telling serialized narrative stories with some continuity, weaving a network for decades, so now we go deeper into the stories and relationships of the characters.
Chucky goes to mass
The first season had the Good Guy doll trying to corrupt the series’ young leads into becoming assassins and ended with a truckload of assassin-souled clones ready to lay siege to hospitals around the world. The beginning of this continues that idea with a magnificent action scene that spreads dozens of Chuckys throughout the county so that the danger is now unpredictable, but it is set to build. a return to the most basic of the franchise, expanded to another scale.
However this time tries to delve into the subgenre that religious terrorplacing him in a Catholic school, a variation of the military academy of the third part, which lead to the scene of ‘Damien’s curse’ (The Omen II, 1978) or the recent resurgence of supernatural terror with priests and exorcists. Mancini has been inspired by his own experience in a Catholic school where he learned the concept of transubstantiation.
The Catholic belief that during mass when the priest blesses the host and the wine literally transforms into the flesh and blood of Christ, was found fascinating by the director, so much so that that mythology is allowed to continue in the key elements of the saga, in which the plastic is transformed into meatbut here he uses that belief in the supernatural from real religion to remix his own ‘Chucky’ universe.
‘Bad education’ with trans dolls
here especially, turning the character into an agent of provocation, as it has always specialized in subverting the status quo, going after authority figures, or attacking hypocrisy, so it’s a pretty fun scenario to unleash the little terrorist. As always, Brad Dourif gives voice to the light-hearted sociopathy of not one, but several dolls, giving them admirable distinction and a sense of fun that sustains even the least entertaining episodes.
But there is not only Chucky in this season. Mancini is unleashed and puts absolutely anything he wants in the potfrom tributes to ‘A Clockwork Orange’ to Almodóvar’s cinema, recovering his queer pride in the characters of Glen and Glenda from ‘The Seed of Chucky’ (2004), the gender-fluid children of the protagonist and Tiffany, who reappear in a key time of discussion on trans visibility.
Mancini is a genius of transgressive horror comedy and in this season 2 of ‘Chucky’ there is more John Waters than ever, his inexhaustible vision of the diabolical doll, takes the franchise to a unique combination humorous and threatening to what is established, using the slasher as a weapon of LGTBI+ pride, without fear of what the tallest fans of the saga may say.
The creator uses queer horror to shoot the repression with gushing blood and deaths always creative that make the unlikely idea of a series with a miniature serial killer still work, even with bottled episodes whodunit and visual ambition that goes all the way to gothic, with fantastical shots like that misty forest full of heads on stakes.