CHILD’S PLAY (2019) & BLACK SWAN

Nothing (and I mean nothing) in the marketing of the Child’s Play remake wanted me to actually spend money to watch it. I mean, come on, if you can’t even get the doll to look good, what’s the point? It turns out I’m happy on two accounts. One, in the end, I didn’t spend money on it (thank you, local library!) and two, it actually surprised me how fun it was. I’m not talking like “holy shit, I need to buy a 4K Blu-Ray copy of it stat!” but it was actually surprisingly well-written, well-acted and well-executed. There was plenty of me to gripe about (Chucky is and always will be a possessed Cabbage Patch Kid with the soul of serial killer in him, not Skynet in doll form) but it made up for it by having a great dynamic between the mother (the always awesome Aubrey Plaza) and her son (a kid I’ve never seen before named Gabriel Bateman). It also had some bizarrely inventive kills, including one that involved some Christmas lights, a roto-tiller, a butcher knife and a field of watermelons. Yeah. A filed of watermelons. And to an old-school horror fan, any film in this day and age that has the balls to have an unsuspecting nine-year-old girl be hit with a torrent of blood is totally worth the price of admission. Even if the admission was free (thanks local library!)

Seemingly the opposite end of Child’s Play was the second feature I watched tonight, Black Swan. I’ve immersed myself lately in psychological horror films — films like The Machinist and Repulsion — and I’d forgotten how compelling Black Swan is… and how much it deserved its nominations and wins back in 2010. It also reminded me of how great Natalie Portman is, a fact that sadly got lost in the mix of drivel like Your Highness. Except for the Thor movies and Annihilation, I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen any of her work the last nine years. I had also forgotten how magnetic the scenes between her and Mila Kunis were, especially the one that gives Mulholland Drive a run for its money for eroticism.