Cult of Chucky (2017)

Cult of Chucky is the rare late-series sequel that feels gleefully alive, snapping the franchise into a fresh setting where paranoia and pitch-black comedy feed each other like a closed circuit. Don Mancini turns the asylum into a pressure cooker of suspicion and gallows humor, and the film moves with brisk, mischievous confidence—never letting you get too comfortable before it yanks the rug out again. Fiona Dourif anchors the madness with a performance that’s genuinely compelling, while Brad Dourif’s Chucky remains a wickedly charismatic menace, delivering the kind of outrageous, crowd-pleasing mayhem the series does best. It’s gory, self-aware, and proudly mean-spirited in its fun, so if you like your horror with a nasty grin and inventive franchise lore, this one earns its bite—though the graphic violence and sleaze mean it’s not for the squeamish.

Cult of Chucky is clearly trying to refresh the franchise by trapping Chucky in a closed, creepy asylum setting and pushing the mythology into weirder, more supernatural territory. The problem is the story gets messy fast, with logic gaps and a “wait, what?” escalation that can feel more convoluted than clever, and the suspense often gives way to plot mechanics instead of genuine dread. If you want tight pacing, coherent rules, and scares that build cleanly, this one may test your patience—especially in the back half where momentum wobbles. That said, Fiona Dourif brings real commitment, Brad Dourif’s voice work is still wickedly fun, and the gore is unapologetically nasty if you’re here for splattery franchise chaos rather than a polished horror thriller.