After months of memes and viral trailer remixes, horror comedy M3GAN arrives in theaters predigested and seemingly destined to be a letdown compared to all the social media hype. Instead, it nearly lives up to the expectations set by its advance online fanbase, delivering a fun, stylish variation on familiar horror-movie themes.
There have been plenty of horror movies about killer robots and deadly dolls, and the title character of M3GAN is both. She’s the creation of toy-company engineer Gemma (Allison Williams), who’s sick of working on insipid, cutesy robot pets and wants to create something more elaborate and more meaningful. Gemma inadvertently finds herself in the ideal position to test M3GAN when she unexpectedly becomes the guardian of her 9-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), after Cady’s parents are killed in a car accident. Gemma’s arrogant, buffoonish boss David (Ronny Chieng) doesn’t approve of the M3GAN project, but Gemma moves forward with it anyway, desperate for any help in raising this child she barely knows.
At first, M3GAN (short for Model 3 Generative Android) seems perfect for Cady, bringing her out of her shell and keeping her occupied while Gemma focuses on work. But M3GAN is vaguely sinister from the start, especially in any situation that could prove even slightly distressing to Cady, whom she’s been programmed to protect. It’s not hard to see where this is going. Even without watching the trailers, M3GAN’s plot is entirely predictable.
Screenwriter Akela Cooper (Malignant) and director Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) effectively balance the horror and the humor, as they have in their previous works, and while M3GAN is never particularly scary, it features some amusingly nasty kills once M3GAN goes rogue. The movie opens with a spot-on parody of a cloying toy commercial, and the filmmakers include some sharp commentary on excessive screen time and the dangers of outsourcing parenting to technology. This isn’t a message movie, though, and the focus remains on M3GAN and her ridiculous antics, from singing Cady to sleep with pop songs to menacingly dancing down hallways. Johnstone’s use of music is delightfully off-kilter, and there are times when it seems like M3GAN could turn into a full-on musical without missing a step.
It takes a little while for M3GAN’s homicidal rage to build, and the relationships among the human characters are less interesting, although Williams and McGraw find some emotional honesty in the exploration of grief and familial bonds. When M3GAN comforts Cady over the loss of her parents, it’s genuinely affecting, and it adds more stakes to the story beyond the typical slasher-movie dynamic.
M3GAN herself is a marvelous creation, occupying just the right spot in the uncanny valley, and that’s thanks to a team effort among the makeup and visual effects artists and actors Amie Donald (who plays M3GAN onscreen) and Jenna Davis (who provides M3GAN’s voice). It’s easy to see her becoming a horror icon alongside murderous dolls like Chucky and Annabelle. She’s closer to the robotic Chucky of the disappointing 2019 Child’s Play remake, but M3GAN is a smarter, more entertaining version of what that movie was attempting.
The PG-13 rating requires Johnstone to pull some of his punches, and M3GAN isn’t quite as brutal as it could have been, especially as the violence escalates in the finale. It’s more goofy than horrific, which may disappoint some horror fans, but is exactly what all the carefully crafted marketing promised. M3GAN is already a burgeoning franchise, with the filmmakers dutifully setting up a potential sequel. The marketing for the next one will probably be even better. ♦
M3GAN
