The money this movie made is absolutely insane. Produced entirely on a $12 million budget, M3GAN surprised everyone – including its makers at Blumhouse, I’d wager – by turning over a whopping $181 million in theatres. That’s right: she became a moment. It’s more than probable that M3GAN’s meme-ability turned this generally average horror movie into a bigger phenomenon than it would have been otherwise, but for the most part, this movie is actually pretty watchable.
Allison Williams leads the cast as Gemma: a tech/robotics genius who is currently working for a kids’ toys conglomerate. With impeccable knowledge in artificial intelligence, she comes up with the idea of creating a lifelike doll to become a best friend after her niece’s parents are both suddenly killed in a car crash. As with most media relating to AIs, we quickly learn that not everything is fine and dandy, and the algorithm that makes M3GAN tick evolves into something much more terrifying.
I didn’t get it at first. But when M3GAN improvised singing David Guetta‘s 2011 anthem Titanium I knew this movie was iconic. You read that correctly. This was also the moment I realised this was much more of a horror-comedy in the vain of Child’s Play than it was a serious attempt at a bone-chiller.
Truly, this movie is camp horror at its finest. Like, why did she dance like that immediately before brutally murdering some dude in an elevator? Absolutely no reason. But also… why the fuck not? One of those self-aware movies that pokes fun at itself and its entire premise, M3gan never takes itself too seriously because it knows that the audience won’t. And that’s what makes it so good.
Weirdly, it’s hard to tell whether this film is actually supposed to be “scary” or not, since the comedic side of things is actually kind of on point. For me, the dark comedy was much more prominent than any real frights, although it is littered with the odd jump scare and the real world threats of AI technologies. Though not as outwardly funny as the likes of the Chucky franchise previously mentioned, the humour left me thoroughly entertained until the very end.
As the headlining adult of the whole thing, Allison Williams was actually very good here – despite generally just playing herself as usual – but this solidifies the thought that she should stick to horror for the rest of her life. And yes, the child actor from The Haunting of Hill House was annoying as fuck, but seeing as she was supposed to be exactly that, I’d say she did a pretty good job.
There’s no danger of M3gan entering the horror hall of fame any time soon, but this premise has “franchise” written all over it. Concise, gory and super watchable, there’s no doubt there’ll be at least another two of these.
M3GAN is currently available to stream on Sky Cinema and Now TV in the UK.
TQR Category Ratings:
Performance: 4
Cinematography: 3
Soundtrack: 4
Costume & Set Design: 4
Plot: 3
Overall Enjoyability Rating: 3½
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