Horror Movie Review: M3GAN (2022)

M3GAN is a 2022 American science fiction horror film directed by Gerard Johnstone, written by Akela Cooper from a story by Cooper and James Wan (who also produced with Jason Blum), and starring Allison Williams and Violet McGraw, with Amie Donald physically portraying M3GAN and Jenna Davis voicing the character.

A young girl named Cady and her parents are involved in a car accident in the snow, leaving Cady an orphan. Cady is sent to live with her aunt Gemma. She’s a roboticist at the high-tech Seattle toy company Funki. Gemma is developing M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android); a life-sized humanoid robot doll powered by artificial intelligence. M3GAN is designed to assist in caretaking duties and being a loyal companion to the child to whom it is assigned. After a faulty test occurs with M3GAN’s functions in their lab, Gemma’s boss David orders her to drop the project.

Gemma and Cady struggle to adapt to their new living situation. Gemma is a workaholic by nature and does not have time to bond with Cady. When Cady discovers Bruce, a motion capture robot that Gemma created, she expresses a wish for a similarly complex toy. This propels Gemma to complete the M3GAN project. The finished model is formally paired with Cady, and David becomes convinced of the project’s potential for success after observing the pair. M3GAN exceeds expectations as a friend and largely takes over for parenthood duties and emotional support. To the point that Gemma’s colleagues, and Cady’s therapist Lydia, in particular, become concerned about Cady. As she is creating an extremely strong emotional attachment to M3GAN.

In addition, being designed to self-improve and adapt, M3GAN starts operating more independently. She begins to target anything that she deems a threat to Cady. She kills the neighbour’s dog after it bites Cady. Later, she harms and is instrumental in the death of a boy who bullies Cady at forest school.

Gemma’s neighbour, Celia, becomes irate about her missing dog. She blames them and believes they have something to do with it after the incident with Cady. The next day, Celia is found brutally murdered. But when Gemma searches M3GAN’s video footage to see if she had anything to do with it, they’re all corrupted during that timeframe.

Will M3GAN continue on her path of destruction or is Cady’s safety enough for her? Watch and find out.

Although M3GAN cannot hide its similarities to Child’s Play, I feel taking from older concepts and modernising them is a good way to go. It makes it feel familiar but relevant and this time around, was done well. In my opinion, I’m totally cool with a movie clearly being more than a bit heavily inspired by other works, as long as they bring their own original spin on it. It’s a big improvement over tired and poorly done remakes.

What’s interesting about M3GAN is that unlike in older movies, the technology for her is here now. Instead of science fiction being in the future, we’re living in it. So the idea of an AI taking over your Tesla or Alexa is a real fear that could happen today. We’re closer to Terminators and Doomsday than we’ve ever been, but damn does it make for entertaining movie ideas.

Both Davis and Donald do an excellent job with M3GAN. The movements are realistic, and not perfect. There were some glitches put in there, that makes it feel even more real because technology never works 100%. The voice was great and gave me GLaDOS vibes.

Unfortunately, as entertaining as the movie is, there are a lot of flaws. I found it to be very tame, which as an adult, is a shame. Additionally, M3GAN is supposed to be a toy for children but every person that met her seemed freaked out by her, I wouldn’t say that’s very marketable. Speaking of marketable, it’s surprising the idea wasn’t stolen instantly as Gemma repeatedly takes M3GAN out into the world and she’s seen by multiple people. She also leaves her unguarded at the forest school and then is shocked that she’s missing… It boggles the mind.

In terms of characters, I didn’t root for anyone or find anyone likeable. Gemma had pretty shakey motivations. She made a promise to her sister but showed no emotion to her death and was very distant from Cady like she didn’t know her at all. Gemma’s decisions are also, in a word, terrible. So terrible that when she eventually makes a good decision near the end, it feels out of character.

With a sequel confirmed, Gemma will surely be in prison because unlike Skynet for example, M3GAN did exactly what she was programmed to do. Gemma intended for her to become sentient clearly, because she allowed her to learn new things and gave her the instruction “protect Cady’s wellbeing at all cost”, which could be easily misinterpreted.

Cady isn’t much better. She literally caused the car crash and almost causes another one with her Aunt. Her behaviour is awful and I thought for sure the twist was going to be that she was a robot. But unfortunately, that’s just the performance being given. Furthermore, there are very little scenes showing her and M3GAN bonding.

Overall, M3GAN is a tonally off movie. It feels as if 2 cuts of different movies got mixed together. I found it to be mostly unsettling and tragic, with a few out of place and fleeting comedic moments. A decent film, with an upcoming sequel I will be watching. But there are far too many flaws to ignore.