Child's Play (2019)

Remember the disappointment you felt that Christmas when Santa brought you an off-brand Cabbage Patch Kids counterfeit when you asked for the real thing? Well, if you grew up on the "Child's Play" movies, then brace yourself for more of the same...

Not helping matters is dead-eyed snark source Aubrey Plaza, somehow less expressive than the doll itself (creepily voiced by Mark Hamill).

It's a toothsome turn from Hamill, who knows a thing or two about infantilised villainy, having voiced the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series.

In trying to build a smarter Chucky, the filmmakers have assembled something unfathomably dumb.

Child's Play is never going to remembered as affectionately as the original. And that's fair enough. But it does run down the clock with enough jump scares, one-liners and gags to make it just about worth the price of your ticket.

Being an AI with faulty circuitry, Chucky 2.0 doesn't have the hilarious vulgarity or the single-minded murderous glee - the soul, if you will - that made Dourif's Chucky such an unnervingly human abomination.

The makeshift nature of Mancini's originals handily outshines this slick, corporate cash-grab.

Making a killer-doll movie out of decent component parts should have been child's play, but this misses the mark.