EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on August 4, 2019. 

This is the first Child’s Play movie made without the involvement of creator Don Mancini and actor Brad Dourif. Instead, Lars Klevberg (whose film Polaroid has been lost in the legislative downfall of the Weinsteins) directed from a script by Tyler Burton Smith (who wrote the video games Sleeping Dogs and Quantum Break).

Mancini has criticized the remake while understanding that rights holder Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer can do anything they want. When asked if he and fellow producer David Kirschner would be involved, he said, “We said no thank you, because we have our ongoing thriving business with Chucky. Obviously my feelings were hurt… And I did create the character and nurture the franchise for three decades. So when someone says, “Oh yeah, we would love to have your name on the film,” it was hard not to feel like I was being patronized. They just wanted our approval. Which I strenuously denied them.”

Instead of the supernatural origins of the past, this Chucky is a Buddi doll created by the Kaslan Corporation. This kind of tears out the most frightening part of the Chucky concept — a doll that somehow comes to life yet is consumed by pure evil.

The real problem starts in a foreign Buddi assembly factory, where an employee takes out all of the safety protocols before killing himself. That doll eventually makes its way to the home of Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza) and her hearing-impaired son Andy (Gabriel Bateman, who was also in Annabelle and Lights Out).

While Andy eventually gains real human friends, Chucky places his friend’s happiness above all common sense and restraint. Unlike the past, where Chucky is motivated only by his own concerns, here you can see how his lack of human understanding leads to all of the murder and mayhem. He doesn’t realize how a movie that the kids watch, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, can provide laughter and pleasure while real death leads to life-changing results.

This Chucky also has the ability to command phones, household objects, drones and cars, as well as command an army of the next line of Buddi dolls on the night they are introduced, which includes a positively harrowing bear version.

I was totally prepared to absolutely despise this film until I saw it in a new light. I wondered, what if Claudio Fragrasso somehow got his hands on the chance to make Child’s Play? The results wouldn’t be all that great, but they’d sure be fun. That’s what this movie aspires to. It’s certainly entertaining — any movie where the adulterous villain is scalped by a tiller in a watermelon patch while taking down Christmas lights and his face is skinned off and passed around as a gift or a child is sprayed right in the face by a store manager’s blood is going to be a winner in my book. But it could have been a totally different film with a totally different title and lead character without changing the story all that much.

But hey — Mark Hamill is awesome as the voice of Chucky and Tim Matheson shows up as Henry Kaslan, the head of Kaslan Industries. I laughed out loud a few times. And I’m not as married to Chucky as a slasher hero as I am to Michael Myers, Jason, Freddy, Leatherface or anyone else. And let’s face — all of those characters have had some pretty bad movies in their history, too. This one isn’t as bad as any of those. Sure, Chucky looks like unfinished CGI, but you can’t have everything.

There’s also another Chucky movie coming out this year called Charles and Mancini has a TV series in development. Want to learn some more about killer dolls? Check out this list of ten evil dolls that we posted a few weeks ago.

Dom (director and co-writer Josh Stifter) is about to give up on his chase to find cryptozoological phenomena and maybe move out of his mom’s basement, but when he gets a video that shows a real chupacabra, he gets Miles (Keith Radichel) and they head out in the woods to have strange dreams and find whatever that skeleton they trip over out there in the darkness on the land that belongs to Doug Greywood (co-writer Daniel Degnan).

When this movie ramps up — and it does — it gets dark and gory while remembering that it’s also a combination black and white creature feature and a buddy comedy about two friends trying to fix their ruined relationship while finding a living and breathing actual goat sucker.

There’s not much else out there like this movies, shot on the smallest of budgets yet having the biggest of hearts. It’s absolute fun and you should do whatever you can to check it out.

You can watch Greywood’s Plot on Tubi.

A day before his new television show Cry Me Dry goes on the air, it gets canceled and nothing actor Eddy Pine (Bodhi Elfman) says or does can get it back. His Hollywood career over before it’s begun, Eddy drinks himself into oblivion while dealing with a clown who shoves a mind-controlling obelisk up his ass which he gives birth to the next morning.

If this sounds like a movie you’d be into from that first paragraph, let me ice the cake: this was directed and written by Richard Elfman (Forbidden Zone)!

Eddy must protect his life — and the universe — as the obelisk is at the center of an interstellar war between clowns and aliens. Now, Earth — and Eddy’s ass — have become the battlefield.

As Eddy would soon say, “My mother’s a junkie wh***. My father’s an alien from outer space. Killer clowns are out to get me. My a**hole’s the portal to the Sixth Dimension and they canceled my f***ing series! Do you really think everything’s going to be ok?”

To battle Clown Emperor Beezel-Chugg (Verne Troyer) and a mind-controlled human clown (Nik Novicki) and his oversized chicken-suited partner Lenny (Steve Agee) as well as stay ahead of the Men in Black and masturbating green aliens, Eddy must join forces with his female-identifying trans brother Jumbo (Steve Agee), an expert on the unknown named Professor von Scheisenberg (French Stewart) and the professor’s gorgeous Swedish assistants Helga Svenson (Rebecca Forsythe) and Inga Svenson (Angeline-Rose Troy), who both fall for our hero.

Somehow, this also has George Wendt as a priest.

This is a movie filled with bathroom humor, puke, political incorrectness and, yes, aliens and clowns. If you want to see a movie that is silly for the sake of being silly without worrying what anyone cares about it, choose this one.

You can get this from MVD.

Based on the book by Arlette Thomas-Fletcher, who also directed the movie, The Lonesome Trail is all about Mike McCray, a cattle baron trying to keep new homesteaders out of his mining town and Carlson, the preacher who rescues them with his Bible instead of a gun. But when the ruthless McCray attacks again, even Carlson’s family members may not stay on his side.

If you’re in the mood for a faith-based western — instead of the lawless Italian ones that are often on this site — The Lonesome Trail is for you.

Thomas-Fletcher is the first African American, woman to write, produce, direct and executive produce a western movie. She fell in love with horses and westerns when she grew up around farming, horses and watching western movies and television shows with her father.

You can get The Lonesome Trail on digital from Gravitas Ventures. You can learn more on the official site.

A remake of the 1986 animated film Valhalla, this film takes advantage of Thor’s popularity to tell the story of Røskva and Tjalfe, two Viking children who travel from Midgard to Valhalla with the gods Thor and Loki to face the Jotnar, the Fenrir wolf and Ragnarok.

Shot on location in Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, this has characters that look nothing like the Marvel films. That’s great because this movie demands to stand on its own two feet.

Røskva and Tjalfe become the servants of the gods yet learn that the ones that they worship are just as human and filled with issues as all of us. Yet can they help those very same flawed gods when the end of all there is looms large?

I thought this was going to be one of those WalMart sneaky films where people buy it because they think it’s the real Thor, but this feels closer to the mythological Thor than the more popular Marvel movies. It’s definitely worth a watch.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Amy Chen (Amy Chang) is a food critic haunted by a past breakup that has led to her developing an eating disorder as her co-worker Peter (Jae Shin) attempts to heal her stomach and get her to fall for him, which may happen when they have to act together in an ad for a pho restaurant.

Angel Li (Yi Liu) is in a loveless marriage with an American businessman named Howard (Erik Lochtefeld). She’s just scored the role of a lifetime, playing a spurned woman who jumps off a bridge, all while she falls for a writer named David (Ludi Lin).

Nina Wong (Celia Au) came to America thanks to her family paying a high cost which she must pay by selling her body as an escort. But can her relationship Ian (Roger Yeh) help her escape the constant toll of selling herself?

Based on a Chinese short story, In A New York Minute is an Asian and Asian American-led film that explores love in three different stories.

First-time writer/director Ximan Li — who co-wrote the script with Yilei Zhou — has created a great interconnected film that comes together quite well. It doesn’t get overly dramatic and allows you a window into lives and experiences that you wouldn’t get to have otherwise. Isn’t that what all great movies should do for their viewers?

In A New York Minute is available on digital from Gravitas Ventures.

20XX: The leaders of Japan have regulated superheroes using a system called the Vector Card, giving a villain the chance to take over. But he didn’t count on working class hero Strega (also known as Gun Caliber) to figure out to hack the cards and save Japan.

That said, the man who is under the mask, Soma Kusanagi, has to get drunk and figure out his love life first.

Bueno, who directed this, as well as stars as Soma, Bueno, studied for years under Seiji Takaiwa  — Kamen Rider! — to be a tokusatsu hero, even if the film is quite funny.

Where most heroes — like sentai rangers and Kamen Rider — are virtuous, even when the city is being turned into monsters, Soma is still looking to score. It’s wild because this looks like the real thing and is played like it, so I felt the laughs were earned.

I also really liked how trading cards activated the various weapons that Strega uses. I only have one bit of advice. If you have kids who love shows like this, maybe make sure they don’t get the chance to see this until they’re older because they could be fooled into thinking this is a real show until, you know, the multiple sex scenes.

The credit is due to VFX director Kiyoshi Hayashi and Singapore artist Gideon J Goh, who designed the costumes. This looks cool as it gets and with each movie, Bueno and Garage Hero seem to be getting better.

You can watch this on Tubi.