YMMV / Curse of Chucky

• Character Rerailment: After Bride and Seed made him more comedic and less pragmatic to the point of becoming Stupid Evil, this film returned Chucky to his original, cunning characterization.
• Growing the Beard: This film largely succeeded in making Chucky scary again, tying together the previous films, and steering the franchise back on track.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Nica's final taunt to Chucky about being unable to kill her becomes much more horrifying given how she ends up possessed by Chucky at the end of Cult as well as being taken hostage by a smitten Tiffany and having her limbs amputated in the television series. In fact some might even argue death would've been a much better option for Nica than what later installments have in store for her.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ian might earn some sympathy when the audience finds out his wife is cheating on him, but that goes out the window once he blames Nica for Chucky's killings and his daughter's kindapping, subsequently using the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on her after she passes out, and planning to turn her over to the authorities after finding Alice.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Tiffany appears in the finale in bloody fashion and is the one who mailed Chucky to Nica in the first place.
  • Andy proves to be Crazy-Prepared in The Stinger.
• Poor Man's Substitute: It seems Joseph LoDuca was trying to emulate Danny Elfman in his score except in a minimalist low-budget synth-dominated fashion akin to that of Mick Garris' Production Posse composer Nicholas Pike or Full Moon Features composer Richard Band or even Kevin Kiner's score to Leprechaun.
• Special Effect Failure: It's very obvious whenever Chucky is about to start speaking, as his "living doll" form's face has a distinctly different shape than the "inanimate doll" form he takes when incognito.
  • When he climbs down the stairs after murdering Barb, he's rendered in CGI, and looks utterly terrible.
  • Like in previous films, it's obvious in birds-eye shots that he's being played by an actor, as he lacks his distinctively jerky movements.
  • Human Charles in a majority of the flashback scenes is clearly played by the over-60 present-day Brad Dourif. When it cuts back to stock footage of the first film showing him being chased into the toy store, he suddenly de-ages 30 years.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Going by aggregates, it's the best-reviewed installment in the Child's Play series, and generally won back fans alienated by the turn to comedy exhibited in the previous two installments.
• Wheelchair Woobie: Nica, who has a Big Sister Bully who tries to swindle her of her home out of greed, is born paraplegic due to her mother getting her womb stabbed by Charles Lee Ray right before she was born and is then wrongly convicted of murder.

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