M3GAN Review

M3GAN review.

M3GAN plays it safe too often to elevate itself to classic status…but provides a fun popcorn movie for those interested. Like it’s titular AI…M3GAN has been designed by people who didn’t think through all of the problems.

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M3GAN

Directed by Gerard Johnstone

Screenplay by Akela Cooper

Starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng and Brian Jordan Alvarez

M3GAN Review

M3GAN, the AI doll, is designed to be everything that a kid could want.  The movie, M3GAN, does not share that ambition.  Playing it safe at nearly every turn, the movie M3GAN would have benefited from letting its antagonist fully cut loose.  The antagonist that it introduces, however, should have long life in sequel form.

After losing her parents to an accident, Cady (Violet McGraw) goes to live with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams).  Gemma isn’t prepared for the assignment of caring for a child.  She has, however, designed a new android doll that is equipped for the task.  If you’ve seen any movie ever…you know that it’s not going to go well from there.

M3GAN trades on beats earned from other movies that tackle the same subject matter.  This isn’t a complaint…how many ways are there to tell the Chucky/Terminator stories?  A lot of its fun comes from knowing winks about what will happen.  Those are earned because viewers will be familiar with this story already.  Introduce an annoying character?  You know what’s going to happen to them eventually.  Offend the doll and dismiss it as a toy?  Yeah…there is going to be some pay back for that.

What makes the formula a little different this time is that M3GAN is designed to protect and care for Cady.  This doesn’t justify the violence the doll unleashes…but it puts the burden squarely on her creator.  The movie occasionally signifies that it will go in the direction of blaming the doctor for her Frankenstein’s monster…but that thread is dropped whenever the story feels it’s problematic.  I don’t think the movie would have been better off choosing to address it…but you are left thinking…you know…this is like 100% all the aunt’s fault. 

M3GAN’s success comes from its dark humor.  This is a pretty consistently entertaining picture.  It understands the value of anticipating the titular AI doll wreaking havoc.  If this was followed up by letting M3GAN truly deliver on that promise, the movie would have been a lot better.  The violence here is mostly implied and off screen.  A few moments sneak through but nothing that is going to threaten having it appeal to the largest movie going audience possible.  Almost like a gateway horror movie for adults.  As we know, in horror, we can use all kinds.

M3GAN does run into some strange narrative problems.  Cady, Gemma and M3GAN all take radical and unearned shifts at some point in the story.  They each represent necessary story beats…they just come out of nowhere.  It’s strange that a script that roots itself in the difficult relationship between Cady and Gemma would have their emotional breakthrough moments happen with so little build. 

As for M3GAN…her reasoning for becoming what she does is a bit sloppy.  Early in the movie would have you to believe that everything she is doing is in service of a warped sense of protection for Cady.  This theme is revisited later in the film as well.  It doesn’t explain all her actions, however.  She acts with a violence first attitude after a certain point…even with Cady nowhere to be seen.

These flaws keep M3GAN from achieving greatness, but they don’t prevent it from being a good movie.  This is the kind of movie that will please an audience who likes dark comedy and thrills but doesn’t want to see how the sausage is made…so to speak.  For horror enthusiasts, it’s all been done before.  Bloodier and crazier.  Potential success on a wider scale is something that everyone should be rooting for.  Especially because M3GAN introduces a new star with serious franchise potential in its AI antagonist. 

Scare Value

There is a lot more potential in M3GAN that this entry takes advantage of. I call it “this entry” because it’s a film with a clear path to become a franchise. The M3GAN character is worthy of further exploration even if the world of this particular film is not. Hopefully a sequel takes a more ambitious approach, and the filmmakers are allowed to cut a little looser. That’s not to say there isn’t a fun time to be had with M3GAN. It’s an enjoyable time that just stays too inside the box to be more than that. Hopefully its appeal to a mass audience pays off.

3/5

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