M3GAN Movie Review: Blumhouse’s Sci-fi Horror Flick Delivers a Fairly Enjoyable Story about Artificial Intelligence Gone Wrong (Latestly Exclusive)

M3GAN Movie Review: After the success of the new Chucky series and the Annabelle films, we now have M3GAN; a new film featuring an AI doll who after a series of events loses her cool and turns into a killer robot specialising in tearing ears off kids and brutally murdering old aunts. Universal pushed really hard for the marketing over here with dancing M3GANS showing up at the premieres and the Twitter handle itself messaging you, and while that could have come off as a bit gimmicky, I am actually glad to be proved wrong because that’s one aspect of this film that I really enjoyed. The Pale Blue Eye Movie Review: Christian Bale, Harry Melling Excel in Netflix's Uneventful Murder-Mystery (LatestLY Exclusive).

Directed by Gerard Johnstone, M3GAN follows Cady (Violet McGraw), a child obsessed with toys who loses her parents in a tragic car accident. Being orphaned, she is sent to her aunt Gemma’s (Allison Williams) house who works for a huge toy company and is essentially a workaholic. Working on the project called “M3GAN,” a doll designed to be the perfect toy and be a child’s best companion, Gemma decides to test it out by pairing her up with Cady. However, things don’t play out really well with the robot getting extremely attached to the kid, and it acting hostile towards everyone who wishes her emotional or physical harm with a bunch of deaths taking place.

I personally have been burnt out on the entire concept of a doll who becomes a killer. Child’s Play revolutionised it while Annabelle overexposed it, and going into M3GAN I really wondered what it had to offer, and thankfully the film does quite well in this regard I would say so. Bringing a sense of modernity to this concept in the same way the latest Invisible Man was able to do with well, invisible entities, M3GAN goes the good ol’ route of AI gone wrong rather than having a demonic presence take over the doll.

M3GAN remains a morbidly entertaining source of element that makes for some of the most enjoyable scenes in the film. Having the young Amie Donald be the body of the character brings about a palpable sense of uncanny valley while Jenna Davis’s lifeless voice weirdly breathes life into this character, and she was horrifying to say the least. Running like she has hind legs to chase down a boy or doing a dance down the hallway which was teased in the trailers (which has become iconic in its own regard), this is a killer doll that I enjoyed watching.

Watch the Trailer for M3GAN:

The story does make for a fun backdrop too,  albeit having its fair share of faults. Cady’s story in particular makes for a good setup where you see her character get overly dependent on M3GAN too. Throwing a temper tantrum when she doesn’t have access to the doll and dealing with grief in her own way, I liked seeing that journey transform over the film. Cady could have been easily annoying, but Violet McGraw knows how to use the material at hand, and she does run with it pretty well.

Sadly, it’s Allison Williams’ Gemma who runs a bit off the deep end. Williams is consistent in the role, yet the writing never knows how to handle her. Meeting Cady for the first time and realising that her sister has just died, Gemma just frowns upon the fact where it's never really established if she was close to her family or not. M3GAN also wants me to follow through with her on this project where she just decides to user her niece as a test dummy and make me root for her in some way, and yet I never felt anything but confliction towards her.

I also did wish that M3GAN actually delivered on lot of its violence. One particular scene saw the doll torment a kid who was bullying Cady, and what she does is tear off his ear and chase him down until he gets hit by a car, and yet Gerard Johnstone always pulled back the camera from showing us these moments. The gruesomeness of it is implied, and I feel it would have worked better had the film actually showed those scenes to us. The director has spoken about how there is R-rated cut of the film out there, and I hope it gets released because I would love to see a bit more.

In the same way, the film occasionally shies from being way too crazy with its camp too. Undeniably, there is a fine film we have over here, but it feels like M3GAN could have been crazier if it would have just gone a step bit further. M3GAN singing Sia and David Guetta’s “Titanium” to put Cady off to sleep had me howling in the theatre, and a line about kicking “Hasbro in the nuts” was just chef’s kiss. Plane Movie Review: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter Make for a Fun Dynamic-Duo in This Fairly Simple but Entertaining Action Thriller (LatestLY Exclusive).

Thankfully, M3GAN does deliver on its horror roots. There are some good moments sprinkled throughout in here that harkened back to the weird body distortion of Evil Dead, and when the doll is just awake in the night looking at you from the corner, it does a good job in delivering a sense of dread. Also, the third act kicked ass and the sequel set-up was actually pretty cool.

Yay!

Amie Donald and Jenna Davis as M3GAN

Delivers of the Creepy Horror-Doll Aspect

Nay!

Shy’s Away from Some of its Violence

Gemma Feels Inconsistently Written

Final Thoughts

M3GAN serves as a good test-platter for what’s more to come. I genuinely enjoyed my time watching this because this a good film, but I still feel it could have been better had it gone a step further and not played it shy. The doll itself is pretty fun to watch, and you bet Halloween this year is going to be filled with M3GANS. The film is playing in theatres right now.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 13, 2023 04:17 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).