M3GAN Movie Review
Nathan Swank
January 6th, 2023
WEST WORLD, BLADE RUNNER, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, ALIEN, ROBOCOP, TERMINATOR, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, the list of movies with killer robots is quite long. CHILD’S PLAY, POLTERGEIST, ANNABELLE, the list of killer doll movies isn’t too shabby either. The new horror thriller, M3GAN, combines these genres in a fun familiar way, but with enough originality to make an effectively creepy good time.
Gemma (Allison Williams) is a mechanical engineer at a massive electronics company. She builds a life-like robotic doll against protocol with a few bugs, which she is forced to terminate the project. However, after a tragic car accident kills Gemma’s sister and brother-in-law, leaving their daughter and Gemma’s niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) as the sole survivor, Gemma finds herself as Cady’s new guardian. To help cope with the pain of the loss, she introduces her robotic toy project M3GAN to be Cady’s new friend. But as we all know, M3GAN’s programmed protective nature begins to go awry.
The story by Akela Cooper and James Wan is simple yet effective and director Gerard Johnstone capably steered the ship fleshing out the concept. I think it’s important to recognize our two leads Allison Williams and Violet McGraw who do an exceptional job humanizing the machine by expressing love and fear towards it. But more importantly, is the physical and audio creation of the extremely haunting M3GAN. Performed by Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis, the construction and movement of M3GAN is pure horror art. It’s exactly the correct amount of real and not real to make a horrifying and hypnotizingly creepy creature. When it walks or even dances, the viewer has to think, what am I looking at that I can’t look away from?
M3GAN could be compared to an episode from the disturbing technological, thought-provoking Black Mirror series. For my money ,that’s a great compliment. M3GAN isn’t groundbreaking by any means, but it is an effective horror thriller that is a bit more accessible to a wider audience than your bloody, jump scare horror films. More importantly, it’s scary fun.
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