Editorials
‘Child’s Play’ – Celebrating 35 Years of Chucky and the Power of Damballa
Thirty-five years, seven feature films, and three seasons deep into an ongoing television series haven’t diminished Chucky’s bloodlust in the slightest. That’s no easy feat, even in a genre largely driven by surviving impossible odds and obstacles. With each new entry, Chucky somehow manages to grow even more maniacal and devious, adapting to bizarre new twists that a prolonged voodoo curse throws his way. Of course, that voodoo curse started it all 35 years ago today, when Child’s Play stabbed its way into theaters on November 9, 1988.
While Chucky’s journey continues to surprise through new revelations, characters, and sharp narrative turns, it’s anchored by the killer’s unrelenting pursuit of vengeance and his voodoo origins. That voodoo curse also allows for one of the most notable deaths in the series for its almost meta-levels of doll-on-doll violence.
Director Tom Holland (Fright Night) and screenwriter John Lafia updated Don Mancini’s script, increasing Chucky’s presence and giving him his voodoo origins. Child’s Play opens with an intense shootout on the streets of Chicago, where Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) chases wanted killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif). The detective knows he has his suspect cornered and bleeding out, but the serial killer establishes his knack for evading authorities by evoking Damballa to transfer his soul into the closest thing available: the season’s most coveted toy. Now in Good Guy doll form, Charles lays low as he eventually finds his way into the home of Karen (Catherine Hicks) and Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent). It’s the perfect ruse for Chucky to carry out his quest for revenge against Detective Norris and the allies that left him for dead.
Chucky nearly succeeds, too; inhabiting an inanimate object unshackles him completely from society and allows a new level of indivisibility. That changes when he attempts to scratch Detective Norris permanently off his murder to-do list and instead finds himself wounded and bleeding. Realizing the Voodoo 101 courses he took didn’t prepare him for this, Chucky seeks his teacher for solutions to his pesky mortality problem. It’s not a warm reunion between Chucky and his instructor, though.
John “Dr. Death” Bishop (Raymond Oliver) is horrified to see how Charles Lee Ray applied the knowledge of Damballa. Evading death wasn’t the purpose of his teachings, especially not in this way. He refuses to help Chucky beyond the helpful bit of exposition that the longer he stays in that body, the more human it becomes.
It’s here where the killer and Holland have a bit of fun. Chucky outsmarts his teacher by pulling out his contingency plan: Dr. Death’s personal voodoo doll. The pint-sized killer doll wields a voodoo doll, snapping his voodoo mentor’s limbs to force cooperation. While this sequence and demise act as a crucial exposition vehicle, there’s an almost meta quality to watching a killer doll wield another doll as a weapon to unleash pain and suffering.
This key scene revealed more about the voodoo workings that put a murderer in a doll and established Chucky’s enduring motivation to escape his increasingly mortal doll body. But it’s also one of the rare instances in the entire franchise where voodoo gets used in this way. The subsequent sequels, penned by Mancini, retained the core mythology introduced in Child’s Play but instead focused on Chucky’s bloodlust and grudge matches.
“Ade due Damballa. Give me the power, I beg of you!”
Chucky’s now iconic chants were never forgotten or sidelined entirely; Mancini latched onto the soul transference concept and frequently employed it comedically, especially once Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly) entered the equation. It became a more nebulous concept for Mancini to play with the mythology in later sequels, in which Chucky splintered his soul across human bodies and Good Guy dolls alike. Sometimes, the voodoo was even retconned a bit, like Bride of Chucky‘s reveal that the Heart of Damballa amulet was a covert piece of Charles Lee Ray’s soul transference spell. It’s a testament to the franchise’s creative driving force, Mancini, that he honored the voodoo component as canon and found new ways to play around with or build upon its mythology while never letting it overshadow the personalities and modus operandi of his twisted killer doll.
Three and a half decades later, the power of Damballa continues to shape this franchise in surprising ways. It also makes for a fascinating touchstone for the characters’ overarching and ever-evolving stories. What began as a prominent plot point and horror icon origin has shifted into something far more playful and unrestrained. Child’s Play saw Chucky commit doll-on-doll murder through voodoo. But season two of “Chucky” used voodoo to allow for frequently comical, violent doll-on-doll murder via multiple iterations of warring Chucky dolls.
Now, voodoo is a cornerstone of Chucky’s being, but it’s never his driving force, ensuring he’ll remain horror fans’ friend till the end.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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