by Austen Terry, Contributing Writer
Last year saw a resurgence of good mainstream horror movies, leaving many horror fans wondering if this trend will continue into 2023. Blumhouse’s newest movie is M3GAN, the first in what is shaping up to be another stacked year in horror. This movie essentially feels like a bunch of movies, and even TV show plot lines, rolled into one story, and it actually works. It has elements of a Rick and Morty episode, The 6th Day elements, and even some elements of Chucky thrown in, and they all combine for a pretty decent movie. In the past, January seemed like the dumping grounds for movies studios didn’t have a lot of faith in, but last year’s release of Scream showed us maybe horror can be released throughout the year, and not just dropped around October.
M3GAN tells the story of Cady (Violet McGraw), who goes to live with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) after her parents die in an accident. Gemma, a robotics engineer who has no idea how to raise a child, let alone care for one who just lost her parents, builds her a lifelike AI robot friend in M3GAN (Amie Donald, and voiced by Jenna Davis). When M3gan is told her primary objective is to protect Cady, she begins to take that directive too far, causing chaos for Gemma and Cady. This chaos begins to break Gemma’s world as she is working with her company, Funki,to release M3gan as a very expensive toy that will help kids. The best way to help describe what this movie is, is to compare it to that episode of Rick and Morty where Summer is locked in Rick’s spaceship, and the ship does everything to protect Summer. That’s essentially what M3gan does for Cady.
Akela Cooper and James Wan return to write the screenplay together after working together on the 2021 horror film Malignant, and surprisingly bring us a pretty decent horror film. M3GAN was reworked from an R-rated horror movie to a PG-13 one, which works here. Honestly, there didn’t need to be a lot of blood and gore to make this work. Cooper and Wan’s previous film was very gory, but it does share a certain theme in that both villains seem to move similarly.
M3GAN can be cheesy at points, and it drags a bit to get us to the introduction of M3gan, but it works because Gemma grows to see how she can care for her niece, and not just what she has built. I found myself enjoying this film far more than Malignant. Here is another movie that is only really shot around four locations and doesn’t have to expand to a broader world to build a scope; it can be contained here.
McGraw is no stranger to horror, having played Young Nell in Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House, and she truly shines here as the main protagonist. McGraw and Williams work well together, having to build up trust between each other over the course of the film. As M3gan is supposed to bond with McGraw, they build trust easily, and Donald and McGraw almost seem like sisters. What makes this film work is that McGraw’s young — she shows the range of emotion a child would go through when having gone through a traumatic event like Cady has.
What truly shines is having an actual actress play the robot doll. In the Chucky movie, or movies like Gremlins, they used animatronics and had teams of people working the dolls to make their movement believable. Casting a young actress who can move works so well that even people I have talked to didn’t realize that M3gan wasn’t CGI or animatronics. Donald does a fantastic job in her movements — it made it look like she was really a robotic toy, and not a real person. That makes the film that much better, because M3gan is not just a CGI villain; you appreciate the practicality of it.
The marketing pretty much sets this movie up to be a Chucky ripoff, and if you go in thinking that, you might be pretty disappointed. Because marketing departments are seeing that making stuff go viral on TikTok can bring people in. I went to a 10 a.m. showing on a Sunday, and there were 20 or 30 people there. Blumhouse marketing released clips of M3GAN on TikTok, primarily of her dancing, and it went viral. Having your movie be on people’s minds will get them to the movie. Say what you want about TikTok and social media, but there were several movies I watched last year alone because TikTok.
M3GAN seems to have caused a rift — some people like it, and others don’t, which I understand. To each their own. But the film is actually pretty good. It has some scares, and even funny moments, but it doesn’t knock you down with gore or jump scares. AI films have been a mainstay in horror. M3GAN might not go down if infamy as some have, but it is still better than others.
Score: 7/10
M3GAN is currently playing in theaters
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