M3GAN (2023)

Everyone and their mother knows “M3GAN” by now. Its trailer was the viral sensation of 2022, a movie that built anticipation less on press and more on the clout the clips built on formats like Tik Tok. Thankfully director Gerard Johnstone’s horror scifi amalgam lives up to its hype. It’s a breezy ninety minute horror flick about technology run amok, and three female personas battling for domination. And it might be my favorite genre flick of the year, yet.

M3GAN is a marvel of artificial intelligence, a lifelike doll that’s programmed to be a child’s greatest companion and a parent’s greatest ally. Designed by Gemma, a brilliant roboticist, M3GAN can listen, watch and learn as it plays the role of friend and teacher, playmate and protector. When Gemma becomes the unexpected caretaker of her 8-year-old niece Cady, she decides to give the girl an M3GAN prototype, a decision that leads to unimaginable consequences.

Only at ninety minutes “M3GAN” has a lot of information to put on the audience and Akela Cooper’s script manages to squeeze in a lot of what we need to know and make it so satisfying. What’s more is there is a ton of foreshadowing that culminates in to some pretty gnarly moments, especially one in the climax that felt like a call back to “Aliens.” Created with a combination of puppetry, animatronics, VFX, and a human actor (Amie Donald, with a voice by Jenna Davis), M3GAN is the tech gone wrong story for the modern age. The combination of the sound design along with the ace voice work by Jenna Davis turns M3GAN in to a quotable, conniving villain who is following her programming.

But we always get the sense there’s something more going on. Something deeper. If she’s linked to Cady, is she carrying out some of Cady’s base violent desires? Is she thinking for herself and using Cady’s violent urges as a launch point? She’s a working android that looks just human enough but the uncanny valley always keeps her a startling figure at first glance. She’s the most unlikely villain who begins as a protector and inevitably becomes maniacal based on her embedded motherly instincts. The cast are great, as Violet McGraw is memorable as young Cady, while Allison Williams is compelling as a woman whose good intentions paves the road to hell.

“M3GAN” works because it knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and it manages to deliver on what I can only describe as a hard PG-13 rating. There are some slick kills, as well as a gross moment involving the ears of a bully tormenting Cady. M3GAN does her job just too well, and Gemma inevitably has to outwit her creation whose own sense of territory causes her to become deadlier and deadlier. I’m pretty stumped on how they’d plan a sequel, but nevertheless we are getting one. That said, “M3GAN” is a darkly comedic, creepy, entertaining Frankenstein tale for the digital era, and I had a blast.