Review of M3GAN (2022) by Rebecca31 — 15 Jan 2023

A toy company forgot to install Asimov’s three laws of robotics and violent chaos ensues. M3GAN is a combination of Chucky and Artificial Intelligence with a little bit of Black Mirror and Robocop thrown into the mix. The result being a very entertaining movie that will no doubt spawn a whole new series of sequels.

Gemma (Allison Williams) is a robotics engineer at a toy company who have just created a revolutionary toy that will soon become the must-have for every child. This life-like doll is there to meet all your child’s needs, and with M3GAN around you’ll never need another toy ever again. Gemma has the opportunity to pilot M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android) with her niece Cady (Violet McGraw). Cady is now M3GAN’s primary user and she is programmed to protect her at whatever cost.

Right away you can see where this movie is going. There’s nothing revolutionary about the story, it’s a combination of other ideas done before yet M3GAN ends up being a very entertaining and an unexpectedly hilarious cinema experience. It plays less into the horror and more into comedic moments but it works. Though it’s more than a generic horror/comedy with satirical elements running throughout, and raises issues such as our increasingly reliance on technology and the ethical dilemmas around creating a toy that could arguably be a substitution for parenting. M3GAN doesn’t take itself too seriously at all and plays into the comedy, delivering exactly what you expect.

I saw this in a busy cinema, with everyone thoroughly enjoying the movie. It’s short, predictable with no real surprises, though the M3GAN doll did a lot more singing than I was expecting which is as creepy as it sounds. M3GAN is not going to give you any nightmares, it’s the same level of scary that Chucky and Small Soldiers is. Clearly the violence was toned down to appeal to a wider audience. I wouldn’t quite call this a horror because it really isn’t scary enough, it ends up being more freaky than anything else but it’s highly entertaining in the moment and has enough laughs to keep the crowd happy.