Lars Klevberg’s Child’s Play strips Don Mancini’s voodoo creation of his serial killer soul, replaces it with tampered A.I. programming, and “reimagines” a wholly new genre sandbox. For better, for worse, Kaslan Industries’ cloud-based Buddi dolls introduce a Chucky 2.0 with the same denim overalls, same “ginger” hair, but altogether different creative approach. One that begins as an outright loner comedy then digresses into rudimentary blood-and-guts slasher territory.

Child’s Play is a bizarre combination of Bear McCreary’s vinyl-worthy “toy orchestra” score, Tyler Burton Smith’s wonkily coincidence-based screenplay, death sequences of the highest ick-factor, and so much more – but what’s it all make? A procedurally rigid Child’s Play that doesn’t scare, only shocks through intermittent violence, and begs the question of why this had to be a Chucky reboot in the first place.

Gabriel Bateman steps in as an older iteration of Andy Barclay,...