![]() ![]() On a narrative level, Seed of Chucky is trying very hard to be Wes Craven's New Nightmare, one of the best instalments of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. The horror genre, like fantasy and sci-fi, relies heavily on the suspension of disbelief: without an audience investing in the characters and their situation, a horror film cannot be scary. Deliberately deconstructing a story, or drawing attention to the artificiality of a given situation, can have the effect of undermining the audience's emotional attachment. ![]() Playing the postmodern game is a gamble in any genre. Seed of Chucky attempts to carry on where Bride left off, but is far less successful, being ill-thought out and poorly directed. By abandoning outright horror in favour of self-aware, postmodern horror-comedy, the series successfully embraced its goofier elements and turned them into something disturbingly memorable. The Child's Play franchise seemed to have run its course when Child's Play 3 went straight-to-video, only for Ronny Yu's Bride of Chucky to give it a new lease of life. Even with partial returns to form along the way, these sequels inevitably ended up retreading old ground, even in franchises that didn't start from the top. The original Nightmare on Elm Street, Hallowe'en or Friday the 13th were so definitive in their own ways that any sequel couldn't hope to improve upon them, aside from addressing certain technical issues. Horror franchises are invariably subject to the law of diminishing returns.
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