Editorials
The Queer Horror of “Chucky”: Episode 8 – “An Affair To Dismember” and Horror’s Newest Final Boy
Each week Joe Lipsett will highlight a key scene or interaction in Don Mancini’s Chucky series to consider how the show is engaging with and contributing to queer horror.
It’s been a long, weird road to the season finale of Chucky and we’ve had plenty of great conversations about various queer facets of the show. It delights me to no end that we get to end the first season with a discussion of the Final Boy.
The definitive interpretation of the slasher trope is Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Of course, there’s a legacy of trauma wrapped up in Patton’s experiences making the film (Trace and I chatted with Mark for our live episode of Horror Queers on the film, and there’s a whole fantastic documentary called Scream, Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street that we strongly recommend). While I wouldn’t wish Patton’s mistreatment on anyone, the queerness of NoES2 was a beacon of light for gay men of a certain age, who finally saw themselves represented on screen. Importantly it wasn’t simply as a victim, or a best friend, either; NoES2 remains a fixture of queer horror history because Jesse survives to become a Final Boy.
What’s changed in the 36 years since then is evident in “An Affair To Dismember.” Not only do both Jake (Zackary Arthur) and Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) live to fight another day, but Jake gets to deliver the killing blow against Chucky (Brad Dourif) in direct response to an attack on his queer sexuality.
Jake’s whole arc over these eight episodes has led to this: from a difficult “coming out” to his unsupportive father (Devon Sawa) in episode one, to wooing Devon and kissing him in episode five, to identifying his Chosen family in last week’s episode. The most significant difference between Jesse and Jake is that Jake has never been coded queer; from the very beginning, Jake has been out and (mostly) proud. He’s remained true to who he is throughout, which is something Jesse couldn’t be at the height of the AIDS crisis in Reagan’s homophobic 1985 America.
The other frustrating aspect of NoES2 is that Jesse doesn’t get to be his own hero. He is consumed and discarded by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), so the duties of dispatching the villain falls to Final Girl Lisa (Kim Myers). Jesse only returns for the denouement: he’s a hero who gets sidelined in his own climax.
By comparison, Jake remains firmly in control of his own narrative. He orders Devon to rescue Caroline (Carina Battrick), then faces Chucky down. And while he doesn’t exactly become Sigourney Weaver, Jake more than manages to hold his own. Like his father and his uncle before him (there’s that cyclical familial violence in action), Jake opts to use his own hands, pinning Chucky against a wall to deliver the killing blow.
There’s no subtlety in writers Mancini and Harley Peyton’s dialogue in this scene (by design, I would argue). Chucky, ever the manipulator, suggests that he was Jake’s only friend and that Jake’s father Lucas would never have “accepted him.” Jake laments that Chucky’s actions never gave him a chance to “work it out” with his father, who he argues would have come around if he could have met Devon. Chucky retorts “That is so gay,” a microaggression that equates “gay” with “bad” and is basically a softer version of using the F slur. It’s in keeping with Chucky’s intolerant colloquialisms throughout most of the episode, particularly evident in his interactions with Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), which similarly leads to violence.
“That’s so gay” proves to be the last straw for Jake and he chokes Chucky until his eyes pop out of his plastic head. “Watch your fucking mouth, that’s my boyfriend you’re talking about” he tells the doll corpse, which is itself a significant milestone considering that Jake corrected Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) when she used the same label to describe Devon and Jake earlier in the episode.
Obviously Jake is not the sole hero of this tale – Lexy’s moral rescue of Junior (Teo Briones) and his sacrificial death are arguably the finale’s emotional climax. Still, there’s no doubt that the episode’s greatest “fuck yeah” moment belongs to Jake, an out and proud Final Boy for a new generation of horror queers.
He kills the bad guy, lives to fight another day and gets the boy. What a legend.
Season one of Chucky is now available on Peacock. For more coverage, see Meagan’s review of episode eight.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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