M3GAN
Directed by Gerard Johnstone

At the end of last year, I saw a series of trailers for M3GAN, a movie about a lifelike doll going on a killing spree. As someone who’s seen most of the Child’s Play franchise (about everyone’s favorite killer doll Chucky), this was all familiar territory, only genderswapped. Considering that this was also a January release, a time of year notorious for the release of projects that studios just want to get rid of, I was not feeling particularly hopeful about the quality of M3GAN. I went into M3GAN thankful that at least it wasn’t going to be three hours long like every other movie getting released now, but left shocked, as M3GAN is kind of good.

After the young Cady’s parents die tragically, she goes to live with her aunt Jemma, a high-profile toy designer working on cutting-edge electronic joy products. Although Jemma, who has no children of her own and little idea of how to interact with Cady, struggles to connect with Cady, she soon combines her desire to see Cady happy and her ambition for making “the only toy a child will ever need” into a single creation, M3GAN. M3GAN has all the things a growing child needs like, bluetooth capability, a learning computer brain, and inexplicable strength. M3GAN’s job is the not at all vague directive to ‘protect Cady from all harm, emotional and physical’, which, to the surprise of no one who has seen a movie before, leads to death and destruction.

My apologies for being a bit flippant in the summary above, the straight story isn’t the most impressive part of M3GAN, as it’s essentially another take on the ‘scientist makes a creation they can’t control and everything goes horribly wrong’ subgenre of science fiction, but what’s interesting about M3GAN is that the film goes beyond the straight story into something more satirical, which is where everything good comes from. Instead of relying solely on the ‘killer doll’ aspect, M3GAN satirizes what I call ‘electronic parenting’, an overreliance on electronic devices (tablets, TVs, phones, etc.) which provide constant stimulation and interactivity for young children. The most interesting aspect of M3GAN isn’t the murderous aspect of the title character, but rather the intense emotional bond that Cady forms with M3GAN, a bond that is equally creepy and plausible.

The plausibility comes from a few places but mostly from how the acting all around is surprisingly good, with damn near everyone delivering at least a believable performance, even if some of the dialogue gets a bit wonky in places. Even with that wonkiness, the characters we meet are clear, if a little simplistic, and the real stars of the movie are the satirical element to it that pokes fun at many aspects of modern children’s entertainment and parenting, and of course M3GAN itself, which is a very well done character. With any lower budgeted movie, there’s the possibility that the special effects may not be as well executed as they could be, but M3GAN makes good use of its tight budget, giving us both good effects, on the rare occasion when they’re needed, and giving a generally decent look to the film, both design-wise and cinematographically. For a movie made for 10% of what a lot of studio films are, that’s pretty impressive.

M3GAN didn’t blow me away, but I enjoyed it. You could do a lot worse than this if you’re talking about killer doll android movies, and I honestly think this is significantly better than the Chucky reboot from a few years back. Even though I’m not a fan of everything Blumhouse produces, they hit on something good here and I’m interested in seeing if they’ll do a follow-up to this story, as the finale was bonkers in a way that I was super into. If you’re into killer doll movies or modern satire, I’d say check it out. But maybe wait for it to go on streaming because my theater experience was horrific. Now that that’s done, time for me to get back to working on the best of 2022, which I promise will come out soon!