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The new Child’s Play trailer shows us Chucky as an Alexa-like device gone terrifyingly rogue

The new trailer teases us with Chucky’s voice and shows him commandeering cars and even drones.

Aja Romano
Aja Romano wrote about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.

Child’s Play fans are hyped over the first full trailer for the new series reboot, which takes us further into the nightmare world of a killer Chucky doll — this time one who’s been given a 2019 “smart” upgrade, so he can wreak even more havoc.

The new Chucky, voiced by Mark Hamill, who sounds eerily similar to original Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif, is apparently a kind of rogue home control device similar to Amazon’s “Alexa.” But as we see in the new trailer, Chucky, known as the “Buddi,” can pair with every “smart” device made by his creepy parent company, Kaslan.

That leaves him able to control everything from phones to home appliances to cars and even drones, as he goes on his bloody rampage through Chicago, terrorizing random citizens along with his owner, Andy (Gabriel Bateman), and Andy’s mom, Karen (Aubrey Plaza).

It seems as though the new Child’s Play is banking on your fear of smart technology rather than attempting to craft a more mystical explanation for Chucky’s murderous goals. In the original Child’s Play (1988), the Chucky doll actually housed the spirit of an evil serial killer. In the new film, however, Chucky seems to be a malfunctioning robot whose link to a vast and vulnerable network of gadgets is what makes him extra scary. (Just in case the fact that he’s a knife-wielding killer doll isn’t enough.)

The new trailer builds a little more story from the earlier teaser; combined, they make the new film look a bit like Gremlins in spirit, and we’re here for it.

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