“Is 'Child’s Play' on Netflix? Where to Stream the First Chucky Movie

“Is 'Child’s Play' on Netflix? Where to Stream the First Chucky Movie - Decider” plus 2 more

Is 'Child’s Play' on Netflix? Where to Stream the First Chucky Movie - Decider
As crews raze public housing complexes in Cairo, residents wonder if there will ever be justice - The Southern
'Child's Play' reboot a winking, self-aware horror movie - ARAB TIMES - KUWAIT NEWS - Arab Times Kuwait English Daily

Is 'Child’s Play' on Netflix? Where to Stream the First Chucky Movie - Decider

Posted: 19 Jun 2019 06:30 AM PDT

This weekend, the eighth film about a possessed killer doll named Chucky will hit theaters, aka Child's Play. The 2019 Child's Play—which stars Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, and Mark Hamill (as the voice of Chucky)—is not a sequel to the previous seven films in the Child's Play franchise, but a remake of the 1988 film that started it all. The Halloween franchise successfully executed a similar strategy: David Gordon Green's 2018 Halloween, which retconned all but the original films in the 11-film franchise, was the best Halloween film in years.

I'm not sure what to expect from this Child's Play remake, which is directed by Lars Klevberg and written by Tyler Burton Smith. But I do know that usually after I watch a remake, I'm itching to watch the original. To be fair, the original Child's Play—starring Catherine Hicks, Dinah Manoff, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, and Brad Dourif—was pretty bonkers. I mean, of course, it is! How else does a horror movie gain a cult following big enough to power eight films? If you missed out on the phenomenon the first time around, it's not too late. Here are all the best ways to watch Child's Play online.

IS CHILD'S PLAY ON NETFLIX?

No, sadly, the cult classic that started it all is not available on Netflix. However, if you would like to watch the seventh installment in the Child's Play franchise, 2017's Cult of Chucky, that is streaming on Netflix. I hear it's surprisingly good.

IS CHILD'S PLAY ON HULU?

Not yet! But good news: Child's Play will be on Hulu as of July 1, so check back then. Woohoo!

IS CHILD'S PLAY ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO?

Yes! Child's Play is on Prime Video, and if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you don't even have to pay for it. You'd better hurry though—Child's Play is only streaming free for Prime subscribers until June 30. After that, you'll have to pay to rent or buy a digital copy of the film. Or you could watch it on Hulu.

WHERE ELSE CAN I WATCH CHILD'S PLAY ONLINE?

Good news for Starz subscribers: You can stream Child's Play any time you want. And if you're not a subscriber to any of the above services, you can also buy or rent a digital copy of Child's Play on iTunes, Google Play, or YouTube.

Stream Child's Play on Amazon Prime

Stream Cult of Chucky on Netflix

As crews raze public housing complexes in Cairo, residents wonder if there will ever be justice - The Southern

Posted: 23 Jun 2019 06:00 AM PDT

The civil claim against Wilson was brought under the Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act. A HUD administrative law judge issued an order of consent judgment against Wilson in November for about half of the total penalties for which HUD claimed he was liable.

U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth recently wrote a letter to HUD asking the agency to detail the payment schedule Wilson agreed to — if one exists — and what steps it plans to take next if Wilson fails to make any payments.

"Residents of the ACHA, particularly those of color, lived in squalor while executives directed federal funds toward staff bonuses, alcohol and travel ... It is imperative that justice and accountability are brought to the community of Cairo, Illinois," they wrote in their letter dated June 14. Wilson did not return a phone call from The Southern seeking comment.

HUD spokesman Jereon Brown confirmed last week that Wilson has not made any payments to date, and that the agency is contemplating next steps. The order does not prescribe a timeline for payment, and Brown declined to answer any further questions on the matter. Former ACHA official Martha Franklin agreed to pay $30,000 in a settlement agreement with HUD, and has already paid in full, federal records indicate.

Razing the past

McBride Demolition — Zanthe Matthews hauls cabinets out of a unit at McBride as crews work to tear down the complex.
Molly Parker, The Southern

Meanwhile, work crews are mowing down McBride Place's row buildings one by one, turning Cairo's first public housing complexes, constructed in the early 1940s for African-American families, into piles of rubble. In March, the county housing authority awarded a $1.9 million contract to Benton-based Earth Services to tear down McBride and nearby Elmwood, constructed around the same time, originally for white families. In more recent decades, both complexes predominately housed black families. The neglected properties were infested with rodents, overrun with mold and structurally unsound.

About midway through the demolition process, the heaping mounds of bricks, doors and concrete, shattered glass littering the property, and windowless building skeletons awaiting their fate leave a post-apocalyptic impression.

But Zanthe Matthews sees something else.

"You know how they do it in the movies, like when they show a person going to a place that's ruined, but then they start showing how it was before it got to there? That's what I see when I'm working out here — a movie flashback. I see us playing ball, barbecuing, hanging out — all that stuff."

Matthews was raised by his aunt here, the late Lauretta Matthews. Now he's part of the team helping raze the buildings two years after HUD officials declared them unsafe, and began moving families out. Matthews left Cairo as a young man for about 15 years, relocating to the Chicago area.

He returned in 2010 as his mom, who lives in Brookport, was battling cancer. Then, his aunt passed away the following year. He decided to stick around. Matthews, who lives in a public housing high rise in Cairo overlooking the Ohio River, said he's glad for the work. But it's a surreal experience watching them come down, he added.

Walking over to Unit 605, where he grew up with five cousins who were more like brothers and sisters, Matthews pointed to the kitchen area. This, he said, is where his aunt spent many hours working to feed the family. It was a labor of love. Sometimes she fed the entire neighborhood. "She would feed most of the projects. She was very open-hearted. A good woman." Her homemade biscuits burned such an impression into his childhood that he said he could almost smell them. "She would home-make everything," he said. "I was in there greasing the pans to help. It all went on right there."

On Friday afternoon, Matthews was ripping out cabinets and doors in a building across the property from the one where he spent his youth. Matthews said he's bracing for an emotional day when it comes time to gut 605.

Matthews said it that it seems justice has not been served here. He said it's hard to believe that Wilson, the former ACHA director, has faced no repercussions for not having yet made a single payment for his misdeeds. "The judicial system, it only works for the ones that got money," he said. "If it would have been me that did that, you wouldn't even be sitting here talking to me right now. I'd probably have about 15, 20 years federal time."

No criminal charges forthcoming

Criminal charges unlikely for former ACHA directors as months-long investigation nears an end

CAIRO — There are unlikely to be any criminal charges brought against James Wilson, the former longtime director of the Alexander County Housi…

The Southern previously reported that, based on conversations with people familiar with the matter, criminal charges against Wilson were unexpected following an investigation into past management practices of the ACHA. A June 14 report released by the HUD Office of Inspector General confirmed this.

The "Report of Investigation" stated that the information obtained from the yearslong investigation was presented to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Illinois, for prosecutorial consideration, and that "the office declined to prosecute the case." Steven Weinhoeft, the U.S. attorney who heads that office, previously told The Southern in a statement that the office believed the $500,000 penalty created a "just resolution to the serious allegations of gross mismanagement."

The inspector general's most recent report did not draw any conclusions. Most of it rehashed information that had already been made public by the newspaper, HUD and HUD's investigatory arm. But it did shed some new light on what transpired.

For instance, computer hard drives appeared to have been wiped clean as investigators and HUD overseers honed in on the ACHA in 2015. Wilson told investigators he was aware that an employee had scrubbed one with his personal information on it. Wilson also told investigators that, in hindsight, it was a mistake to spend $420,000 to purchase land and build four houses in Cairo.

The median value of an owner-occupied home in Cairo is $30,500. His ultimate goal was to replace the Elmwood and McBride units with single-family homes over the course of a decade. Wilson also blamed federal sequestration and high utility bills for the ACHA's financial woes. He told investigators that "we made mistakes" but "I did not do anything wrong criminally." The report also provides new details about the extent senior HUD officials with the agency went to distance themselves from growing problems in Cairo.

One senior HUD official at the agency's Washington headquarters reportedly told regional agency officials in an August 2014 conference call to "make it a local problem" and "make it go away," which regional officials interpreted to mean that HUD headquarters was not interested in getting involved in Cairo's housing problems, and wanted local officials and the ACHA to deal with it. Around this time, according to the report, a senior official told another HUD employee concerning the ACHA, "I don't want another receivership on my hands."

Regional officials were told not to take any action until the housing authority was labeled "troubled," a designation that was significantly delayed because HUD inspectors did not properly grade the Elmwood and McBride complexes during routine assessments.

Moving forward

Allesha Collins said she was grateful for Elmwood when, as a new mom at the age of 19 in the late 1980s, she needed a place to stay.

Collins married the child's father after moving into Elmwood, and not long after, they had a second child and bought a house in town. Collins, who has since moved out of the area to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she works as a hospital patient advocate, said she knows that it's sad for a lot of people who spent many years here to see the buildings coming down.

But she said that she believes it was necessary.

"Good can come from the change," she said.

Collins said she had a great upbringing in Cairo, but things changed when her mother passed away when she was just 14. After that, her home life became unstable, and she needed to find her own place. But Collins said that because she was raised in a house, she always saw home ownership as the ultimate goal, and public housing as a temporary option until she could make that happen for her family.

Collins said that because a lot of the families who lived at Elmwood and McBride had never known what it was like to live in a home of their own, the adjustment has been hard and scary for some. But she believes it can also be rewarding for families in the long run.

Of the 185 families who were living at Elmwood and McBride in 2017 when HUD announced plans to tear them down, 70 were able to remain in Cairo. Of those families, 36 moved into other federally assisted housing units in town; 22 were able to use their vouchers to rent a place in Cairo; five moved on their own without assistance; and 12 families purchased their own homes, according to Brown, the HUD spokesman. Most other families moved to communities located about an hour from Cairo, such as Cape Girardeau, Carbondale and Marion. A smaller number left the region entirely.

Terri Childs, a longtime McBride resident, is among those new to homeownership. A teacher's aide at the local school district, she likes her new place, but the last year has been rocky. One month, she had a utility bill that was more than $400, stretching her personal budget to the brink. She's since been able to bring her utility bills under control, by doing things like making sure the lights aren't left on when no one is using a room.

A friend at church later told her about the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that can help people with modest incomes pay their utility bills. She signed up, and was able to reduce her payments drastically. "I had a hard time last year," she said. "But I'm doing really good now."

While HUD offered financial counseling and other classes prior to families moving, Childs said it would have been helpful for the agency to assist families with unexpected challenges after they made the transition, as well.

Childs and her 10-year-old daughter, Miracle, were standing outside McBride on Friday because Childs had received word that the bulldozer was coming for the building on the corner where she raised her girls, just feet from a monument commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

While trying to move forward, Childs said she still comes down to watch the demolition several times a week. She's been documenting it in photos that she posts to her Facebook page. Sometimes, it brings her to tears.

Miracle said she likes having her own bedroom, but misses having other children to play with closer by. "I used to ride my Hoverboard, RipStik and bike on this sidewalk," she said, giving a tour to a reporter and reminiscing. "I fell right there." Miracle said that she and her cousin would visit the King memorial almost every day. It was one of the things she liked best about living at McBride.

"We'd come down here and pray, and then start riding again," she said. Mircale said she hopes that HUD preserves the memorial. Plans call for making sure it has a permanent home in Cairo.

'Child's Play' reboot a winking, self-aware horror movie - ARAB TIMES - KUWAIT NEWS - Arab Times Kuwait English Daily

Posted: 22 Jun 2019 11:53 PM PDT

This image released by Orion Pictures shows the character Chucky (left), and Gabriel Bateman in a scene from the horror film 'Child's Play'. (AP)

Look out, Buzz, there's another good toy movie out

There are two movies opening this weekend that feature iconic anthropomorphic dolls. Be very careful which one you choose.

"Toy Story 4" has the usual gang of lovable toys led by Woody and Buzz. (Bring tissues.) Then there's the remake of "Child's Play", which has Chucky, the freckle-faced homicidal doll who likes stabbing things. (Bring a strong stomach.)

The reviews for "Toy Story 4" are pretty good and you might be surprised to find that the "Child's Play" reboot is actually pretty solid, too. It's a winking, self-aware horror movie that will make you laugh even when things are drenched in blood.

The original "Child's Play" came out in 1988 and featured the nightmare-creating concept of your dolls coming to life and harming you. It was a fairly straight-ahead horror flick with a dash of commentary on consumerism. But the franchise – six sequels – gradually grew camp, most recently with "Cult of Chucky" in 2017.

The reboot this summer has sidestepped Chuck's real dad – the writer and director Don Mancini – and freshened the concept for 2019: Chucky is no longer possessed. Now he's a cloud-connected, self-learning AI doll with wide powers: He controls the lights, TVs, Roomba, cars and other electronic devices. Underneath the gleeful horror is a commentary on our dependence and the inter-connectivity of our devices.

Director Lars Klevberg and screenwriter Tyler Burton Smith don't pretend the killer doll trope hasn't been done before. They fully dive into it, gently mocking the genre as they exploit it and signal to the audience all along what they're doing. "You're my best friend," says Chucky when he's taken out of the box. To which his new owner naturally says: "It's kind of creepy."

Range

This time, Chucky is created by the nefarious Kaslan Corporation, which has a range of interconnected products. A sweatshop worker in Vietnam tasked with assembling the dolls disconnects one of its security protocols in a fit of pique. It ends up in the hands of a single mother (Aubrey Plaza) and her lonely son, Andy (Gabriel Bateman). Chucky tries to understand human behavior but stumbles at subtlety. He's imprinted to Andy and lashes out at anything that Andy dislikes, whether that's the family cat or his mom's new boyfriend.

The filmmakers have left little Easter eggs throughout the film, from references to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" to "Office Space". They have a jokey tendency to use old-school lightning whenever they want to signal something ominous is happening. The final climactic fight scene happens in a dark basement sporting industrial spinning fans with light and smoke pouring out of them. At one point, there's a "Star Wars" joke that is extra funny because Mark Hamill is voicing Chucky.

There's so much tongue-in-cheek humor that even though the body count mounts – and some in the audience may be surprised that death comes to animals and beloved figures alike – there's really no dread. Somehow, despite "Silence of the Lambs"-level carnage, the gore level doesn't shock, inoculated as we are by being in on the joke. Riffing off that, composer Bear McCreary leans in on "Omen"-like, ever-building horror music.

The film's tautness comes and goes, to be honest, never really building to edge-of-your-seat stuff. And it could have had more glee messing with our love of digital convenience. But it takes care of fans of the franchise. The doll comes up with the name Chucky for itself, even though plenty of other options are available. It's owning its past.

Plaza, known for her comedic chops on "Parks and Recreation", shows off a winning dramatic side, while Bateman proves to be an actor to watch, able to play alienated teen, surrogate brother, aghast victim and vengeful son. Brian Tyree Henry once again makes the most of his small role as a kindly cop. And Hamill goes to his creepiest place to say things like "Are we having fun now?"

Surprisingly, we are having fun. While most of the oxygen will be taken up this weekend with "Toy Story 4", credit goes to "Child's Play" for turning in a solid valentine to the darker side of what "Toy Story" also does – including movie posters that drag the bigger franchise. (AP)

"Child's Play", an Orion Pictures release, is rated R for "bloody horror violence and language throughout." Running time: 88 minutes. Three stars out of four. (AP)

By Mark Kennedy

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“Is 'Child’s Play' on Netflix? Where to Stream the First Chucky Movie - Decider” plus 2 more

“Is 'Child’s Play' on Netflix? Where to Stream the First Chucky Movie - Decider” plus 2 more

IS CHILD'S PLAY ON NETFLIX?

IS CHILD'S PLAY ON HULU?

IS CHILD'S PLAY ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO?