Last Updated on October 12, 2021
This Friday, June 21st, a brand new version of the killer doll Chucky is going to be reaching theatres in the CHILD'S PLAY remake… and less than a week later, fellow evil doll Annabelle is going to be crashing his party when her new movie ANNABELLE COMES HOME is released on Wednesday, June 26th. But before these two dolls duke it out at the box office, let's see how they do against each other in a Face-Off.
I don't find the Chucky doll to be instantly creepy when I look at him, and he shouldn't be. The doll is part of a toy line that a company mass-produced with the intention of appealing to children, so it should look like something the average kid would want to be buddies with. He can be creepy when his features are twisted by homicidal rage, but sometimes he can be downright adorable. The stitched together look in later films might have made him even cuter.
It's surprising that the Annabelle doll, created in 1943 by Samuel Mullins of the Mullins Toy Company, went on to become a sought-after collectible, because who would want this thing in their house as something other than horror movie memorabilia? There's just something unsettling about the features of Annabelle's face, this isn't a cute doll that people would fawn over if they saw it sitting on a shelf in your house. Crafting facial features must've been Sam's weakness.
Chucky is a total maniac. Within the doll is the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, the Lakeshore Strangler, and this guy just can't get his fill of murdering people. He thinks killing is hilarious, he's always cracking jokes and laughing his head off. But beneath that twisted sense of humor is also a lot of anger. Chucky gets pissed off very easily, and you don't want to be on his bad side.
Annabelle doesn't have much of a personality. This isn't the sort of killer doll that walks and stalks. All this doll does is sit on its duff while scary things happen around it. It might make subtle movements just to freak people out, a hand or leg in different positions, the head turned a different direction. But she doesn't attack, she doesn't talk. She just stares forward with that creepy look on her face.
The element of surprise has a lot to do with Chucky's success as a slasher. Most people just don't expect this doll to spring to life and murder them. The doll has been known to grab a gun now and then, but for the most part he prefers pulling off classic slasher kills with bladed weapons or anything else that's handy. As long as someone doesn't fall for his doll act and isn't within a few feet of him, his threat level isn't extremely high.
The most threatening thing about Annabelle is her hideous demon companion that can lurk in a home like a ghost, throw people around, mimic the appearance of someone trusted to give an intended victim a false feeling of safety. Sometimes it will outright show itself and chase someone around. The demon also likes to possess people. This is a level of supernatural not even Chucky would want to mess with.
Jennifer Tilly and a bland teen couple have gone up against Chucky, he spent a couple movies tormenting a woman in a wheelchair, but his greatest enemy is Andy Barclay, who has been in five of Chucky's seven movies to date. Andy received Chucky as a present for his sixth birthday, and that doll has been giving him grief and killing people around him intermittently ever since. Now in his mid-thirties, Andy can deal with Chucky pretty well – and for a while he even kept a severed Chucky head around just to chat with and torture.
Just two movies into her franchise (plus the opening scene of THE CONJURING), Annabelle has yet to find a consistent enemy to go up against. ANNABELLE COMES HOME will pick up from THE CONJURING and put her against paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. They're formidable competition, but I doubt Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are going to sign up to take on this doll multiple times. In her previous movies Annabelle tormented a houseful of orphans and a woman with a baby. Not cool at all. What a little twerp.
Chucky's goal in the majority of his films has been to transfer his soul out of the doll body and back into a human body, but after four movies of failing miserably at that (while having some fun on the side killing whenever possible) he drifted away from the idea of leaving the killer doll life behind. Recently he found a way to be both human and doll simultaneously. It doesn't matter much to him anymore, he just wants to continue having fun killing as many people as possible. Over the course of the franchise, Chucky has been responsible for more than fifty deaths.
The demon that hangs out with Annabelle appears to be quite powerful, but it doesn't tend to accomplish all that much because it gets too much enjoyment out of scaring the hell out of people in simple ways. It's like it thinks to itself, “Tonight, all I'm going to do is make some noise in the dark, then hide under this bed.” And it's content with only doing that. Eventually it might get around to using its abilities to kill a couple people, twist their body parts and stick them to a wall. Then it will spend a decade just living life in someone's body.
Chucky gave advice in CHILD'S PLAY 3 that Annabelle should have listened to: "Don't f*ck with the Chuck!" Her movies may do quite well at the box office and her demon buddy is a real creep, but Annabelle doesn't have what it takes to defeat Chucky in a Face-Off. We'll see if ANNABELLE COMES HOME does better against the new CHILD'S PLAY than Annabelle did against Chucky in this competition.
Do you agree with this outcome, or do you think Annabelle should have won? Are you looking forward to CHILD'S PLAY and ANNABELLE COMES HOME? Share your thoughts on these movies and characters in the comments section below. If you have suggestions for future Face-Off articles, you can send them to me at [email protected].
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