Checkered Ninja (2018) – Review

What if Chucky from Child’s Play was a Ninja? That sounds like a pretty badass premise, right? And if the idea of a toy performing murderous martial arts hijinks appeals to you then there is a good chance you will love Thorbjørn Christoffersen and Anders Matthesen’s film the Checkered Ninja, as that is pretty much the premise, but what is truly odd is the fact that it’s also an animated feature for kids. Yes, a movie about a revenge-seeking doll with murder on its mind is a family film from the wonderful country of Denmark. You just have to love the Danes.

When discussing the Checkered Ninja, it’s important to first point out that this film is best viewed by a parent or guardian before plopping the little ones in front of the boob tube, as this film consists of drug use, profanity and extreme acts of violence. Which is to say that this movie could seriously mess up younger viewers. Now, the film has none of the gore you’d find in a Chucky movie, but I actually found some of the moments in Checkered Ninja more shocking and horrifying than from anything I’ve seen in a Child’s Play film. The first clue that you’re watching a very different kind of kid’s film is when the opening scene is revealed to take place in a Taiwanese sweatshop, where children are forced to manufacture cuddly stuffed ninja dolls.

This location doesn’t exactly scream Family Friendly.

Things then take a turn from dark to “What the fuck did I just witness?” territory, as we next see a millionaire Danish toy magnate — I’m sure that’s a thing — arriving to check on the progress of the ninja dolls being manufactured for his company, but then a sleep-deprived child accidentally uses the millionaire’s checkered cashmere scarf — which he had casually dropped on the kid’s work station — to make one of the stuffed ninja toys, and so the Danish asshole beats the child to death. I’m not kidding, this movie begins with child labor and then within minutes moves to the brutal killing of a small boy. This heinous act is the catalyst for mystical forces to strike the checkered ninja doll with lightning and imbue it with the soul of a vengeful ninja, a warrior who centuries ago had been betrayed, resulting in his failure to save the lives of ten children under his protection, and now “when evil is done,” his soul will inhabit dead things to avenge the fallen.

In this case, a cute ninja doll.

The film then takes a bit of a tonal shift as we move locations from Thailand to Denmark, where we are introduced to Aske (Alfred Bjerre Larsen), a seventh-grade outcast who seems to live in a constant state of persecution. Aske lives with his organic food-loving mother, a shiftless idiot stepfather, and a stepbrother who is a fat slovenly bully. If home life seems tough for poor Aske, school isn’t all that much better as it too comes complete with the standard social cliques to shun him and his fellow nerds, and it also includes the obligatory psycho asshat bully, but the one little silver lining in Aske’s tormented life is the lovely Jessica (Emma Sehested Høeg), an eighth-grader who Aske is deeply crushing on, but who, sadly, doesn’t even know he exists. So what we have here is your typical coming of age story, where the shy and cowardly nerd will learn to stop being a punching bag, stand up to the bully, and then win the girl. So where does our checkered ninja fit into all this? Well, the doll ends up in Aske’s possession — given to him by his drunken uncle who worked aboard the cargo ship that the little ninja stowed away on — and the ninja offers to help Aske out with his bully problem if he can, in turn, aid him in finding the Danish toy magnate.

A classic buddy film in the offing.

The Checkered Ninja is easily one of the more bizarre movies I’ve seen in quite some time, just when you think you’ve got a handle on the movie, that the checkered ninja will train Aske to defend himself against the bully and win the girl, and the two of them build elaborate Home Alone booby traps to take on the bully, the film then dives back into the “Dark Side” when Aske learns that the little ninja doll intends to kill the Danish businessman when he finds him. Needless to say, Aske isn’t all too keen on the whole murder thing. Unfortunately, the doll isn’t one to take no for an answer, and it even threatens Aske’s family if he doesn’t agree to help, which leads to the poor kid being locked up in a mental hospital — saving his stepbrother from being smothered by the doll ends up looking like he was the one doing the smothering — until eventually Aske and the doll can come to some kind of understanding.

Survival Tip: Do not get in the Checkered Ninja’s way.

For a small budget film, the animation in Checkered Ninja is surprisingly quite good — the playground showdown with the bully is a truly beautiful sequence — and the humor on display though not always kid-friendly I certainly found quite hilarious, such as Aske’s uncle singing about masturbation and his cavalier attitude towards women and drugs, and then there were moments like our “heroes” procuring cocaine from a drug dealer — don’t ask me why, it’d ruin the surprise — which all goes towards making this a brilliant yet bizarre film. But it’s also an animated movie that I can see some parents finding a little inappropriate for younger viewers. And as mentioned, this film does not shy away from the violence, and though the acts depicted aren’t explicitly shown, the implications are clear and frightening.

Note: The sequence depicting the origin of the spirit ninja was particularly gorgeous.

Checkered Ninja is an animated film I can’t recommend enough, with the caveat that you are the kind of person who is okay with humor that drifts into R-rated territory — think Seth MacFarlane’s Ted but with less anal sex — and its dark tonal shifts may not be for everyone, but I for one really got a kick out of this movie. So if you like trash-talking toys and kick-ass action sequences, you should definitely check out Checkered Ninja, it’s a helluva ride and tons of fun.

Chucky, eat your heart out, there’s a new toy in town.