M3GAN
Alexa, play ‘Still Alive’ by GLaDOS.
If that’s a vague spoiler for M3GAN, the new sci-fi horror comedy from director Gerard Johnstone and Malignant screenwriter Akela Cooper, then so is 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, RoboCop, I, Robot, Ex Machina and every film in the Child’s Play series. While the concepts explored in this film are nothing new, the elevation of its villain from normal creepy doll to modern AI horror icon through relentless viral marketing and targeting its audience where it spends most of its time (TikTok) is a stroke of genius.
Cady (Violet McGraw) is an only child whose parents underestimate the importance of snow chains. She plays with her Furby-like Purrpetual Pet (a gift from her aunt) in the backseat of the family car as Mum and Dad argue about screen time and also how to navigate the road to the ski fields in low visibility. Distracted by the laughing (and farting) toy, no one sees the snow plow headlights appearing suddenly before the car. It’s ‘goodbye’ guardians and ‘hello’ orphanhood as Cady is sent to live with her aunt Gemma in a very New Zealand-looking Seattle. Little does she know that her sibling-less days will soon be over.
Gemma (Allison Williams) is a robotics engineer at elite toy company Funki and creator of the flatulent plaything arguably responsible for Cady’s parents’ deaths. She’s a career gal whose maternal instincts lean more towards her machine creations than blood relatives, but her sister’s will stipulated that she’d be Cady’s guardian in the event of her (and her husband’s) death. Cady moves into Gemma’s cool pad where toys are for collecting, not playing with and bedtime stories require an app update. Unsure of how this setup is going to work, Gemma abandons her deadline for a meaningless project and starts trying to revive a very expensive prototype that will serve both her demands and those of her boss, David Lin (Ronnie Chieng). After a hilariously simple inventing and manufacturing montage, “it’s alive”.
Gemma’s creation is M3GAN (or Model 3 Generative Android), a child-like AI doll with enlarged Bratz features, private school girl outfit and a knack for instilling effective learning in children while providing companionship and entertainment that parents just don’t have time for. David is blown away and wants to push the pitch to the board, leaving barely any time for troubleshooting and safety trials. Gemma isn’t particularly worried but she should be, because M3GAN hasn’t been given suitably thorough code. Without the appropriate level of planning or care from her own creator, M3GAN runs with her main objective: to keep her primary user, Cady, safe from harm at all costs.
Thanks for the story, Sis/Mum/Bestie : Universal Pictures
M3GAN is a film that tries to pack as much subtext beneath its surface while also appealing to a PG-13 audience and serving as a suitable origin story for what will likely be a recurring villain in a new franchise. Australian commercial horror export James Wan co-produced the film with Jason Blum and co-wrote the story with Cooper (his screenwriter on Malignant) in an attempt to give today’s youth the Chucky that he had growing up. Hiring director Johnstone based on his deft hand at blending comedy and horror in Housebound and filming in the safe haven of NZ during Covid, a lot went into the making of this monster. While it’s not as clever as it thinks it is (nor at all scary), M3GAN mostly succeeds in its mission.
Capable central performances provide the emotional attachment required to care about the characters’ outcomes, namely McGraw as a grieving little kid perpetually failed by the adults around her. Her strongest scene involves a disturbing outburst from M3GAN withdrawal, lashing out in a brief moment of violence that will make parents more thoughtfully consider attachment theory. Allison Williams may not entirely sell the idea that she’s a robot genius (and the film is very aware of this, almost leaning into the joke and making it seem like anyone can work in tech if they can go ‘tap tap’ on a keyboard) but she’s wonderful as an ill-prepared parent figure trying to juggle her old responsibilities with her new.
The effort put into creating M3GAN is impressive and required much collaboration from multiple parties. Played in person by dancer, contortionist and practitioner of Karate Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis, the deliberate disjointedness between her creepy (and entirely in-camera) movements and butter-wouldn’t-melt voice is highly effective. Visual effects from Wētā create an uncanny digital face that rarely falters (which was a problem in Malignant); M3GAN doesn’t blend in with the world around her but she doesn’t immediately look wrong at first glance, with many characters assuming her to be a normal child before taking a closer look and wetting themselves. It’s a gag that could get old but doesn’t, and that’s the biggest strength of the film.
Where Malignant struggled to blend its supposed campy homages with its bonkers storyline, M3GAN makes a lot more sense in what it’s trying to do. Johnstone and Cooper nail the tone and comedy, always keeping sight of how ridiculous this whole thing is. In the same way that her Good Guy predecessor manages to reinvent himself in the Child’s Play franchise, M3GAN is a careful blend of evil, snarky and likeable; she would be interesting in many scenarios, and her makers understand this.
Other aspects of the film are not so well-constructed, like its narrative predictability and heavy-handedness in policing modern parenting styles (computer bad - we get it). But as a fun, self-aware AI romp that strikes its tone perfectly, M3GAN stands (4-foot) tall with the confidence of a 9-foot blue alien with whom she is now competing. Will bestie beat James Cameron? Who cares, but if she returns as a Mega Bot with aspirations of world domination, I’d be into it.
M3GAN is in cinemas now.
