Here’s some unmixed praise forM3GAN: its second trailer might be the most effective piece of movie marketing in modern history. Anyone who saw the snarky violence cut to “Dolls” by Bella Poarch and thought it looked like fetid garbage will find themselves proven very right. Anyone who saw it and immediately declared the title character “the moment” will also feel fully vindicated.
M3GANcomes to the big screen as the sophomore project of director Gerard Johnstone, who impressed fans of horror-comedy with his 2014 filmHousebound. The story comes fromBlumhouse royalty James Wan, but the script was crafted by Akela Cooper. Their last collaboration gave the worldMalignant,a magnificent monument to gothic horror camp.M3GANisn’t as special as either of its predecessors, but it is clearly appealing to a wider audience.
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Theplot ofM3GANisextremely simple and predictable. 9-year-old Cady suddenly loses both of her parents in a tragic accident. She’s placed in the care of her mildly-distant aunt Gemma, who is unqualified for and uninterested in raising a child. Gemma is a brilliant roboticist who works at a toy factory, but her drive is creating ever-evolving artificial intelligence. She wants to contribute to the forefront of science, but her boss wants her to put out cheap garbage for children. She wants to devote every waking moment of her life to her work, but she has to raise a kid she didn’t ask for. Her solution is to finish her work on M3gan, adoll that will do everything. It’s a friend, a toy, a therapist, a security guard, and a parent all at once. It’s ultimately terrible at almost all of those tasks, but Gemma needs it to do her job for her, and Cady becomes attached. When M3gan starts killing to protect her charge, Gemma and Cady have to find a way to stop her.
There’s one draw to this film, and it’s in the title. The plot barely matters, the satirical elements feel ripped from a bottom-shelfBlack Mirrorepisode, the characters are all stock standard, and every scene without the doll could be replaced by clips from other films. M3gan is interesting, mainly in the way she differs from other portrayals of this concept. Both the killer dolland the evil AIhave been done before a hundred times. M3gan borrows a little from a lot of different sources. Her voice sounds like GLaD0S as performed by a Disney princess. Her movements vary wildly between perfect efficiency and wild feral flailing. She never actsmuch like an AI. From the instant Gemma switches her on, she’s bursting with human personality. She’s a show-off, she’s snarky, she’s judgmental, she’s a know-it-all. Over time, she becomes cruel. She taunts her enemies and her allies. The theater audience chuckles and gasps at her sassy clapbacks. All her best lines and her one dance scene are in the trailers, but they work in context.
IsM3GANcamp? Certain elements feel deliberately aimed at “so bad, it’s good” cheesy fun, but the film is only partially committed to that supposed goal. The film has a message about the utility of technology and the unpleasant human urge to delegate everything to a machine. The characters may as well turn to the camera and explain in detail how to put parental limits on a kid’s phone. It’s a slasher movie about setting our phones down for a minute. However, it’s also about a child trying to deal with the loss of her parents. It doesn’t take those parts of the story very seriously, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop bringing them up. This film isa breezy 104 minutes, but it still feels needlessly padded. Almost every “horror” moment is spoiled in the trailer. Everything that isn’t in the two trailers is forgettable. The connective tissue between one snarky line, evil malfunction, or PG-13 kill will vanish from the audience’s mind before they’ve finished leaving the theater parking lot.
M3GANis not scary. The plentiful jump scares fall flat every time. M3gan is more focused on being sassy than being scary. The satire glances off of any meaningful point despite regularly reaching towards one. The jokes will be polarizing but most of them are, again, spoiled in the trailer. The premise has been done before, and it’s clear that Johnstone, Wan, and Cooper know that. They refuse to shy away from their inspirations. It could be fairly argued thatM3GANisn’t taking itself seriously. It feels like a movie made up of first-draft ideas. Anything that made the writer’s room laugh made it into the final cut. A cynic might describe it as a mess of clichés with one or two carefully selected moments of off-kilter presentation to trick an audienceinto considering it high camp. A kinder viewer may see it as an attempt to have all the fun of an off-the-wall cult classic in a widely marketable package.
A lot of people are going to loveM3GAN. Most critics are already lavishing it with praise. There’s fun to be had if you’re willing to completely void even the slightest analytical thought.M3GANcould return forfuture installments, or it could be forgotten as soon as the marketing machine breaks down. Those who’ve already given M3gan the same iconic status as The Babadook will find a way to love the film, no matter its flaws. The appeal of aChild’s Playfor the modern age was appealing enough to inspire the reboot’s eerily similar structure, butM3GANcan’t get out of its own way. Here’s hopingM3GANfinds its friends because there must be more going on underneath the silicon skin.
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M3GAN
M3GAN tells the story of a lifelike robotic doll who arrives in a little girl’s life to help her cope with the death of her parents. As the young Cady befriends the robot, its designer, Cady’s aunt Gemma, realizes her self-aware invention is too dangerous to be kept alive. Blumhouse’s 2022 horror phenomenon mixes Chucky’s creepy inclination for violence with the Terminator’s unstoppable nature to craft a terrifying look at the dangers of Artificial Intelligence.
