By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
And her name is “M3gan,” a new horror film to kick off 2023 that provides more laughs than scares. With a basic storyline that completely lacks originality coupled with bad acting and a lack of suspense, there’s very little remaining to entertain an audience. However, there are random, humorous gems strewn throughout the film that keep it somewhat amusing.
Cady (Violet McGraw) is a young girl who loses her parents tragically and traumatically in the beginning of this story. Her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) must suddenly reorganize her single, self-absorbed life to care for Cady as her new legal guardian. Gemma is a robotics engineer for a toy company, ironically called Funki, who is obsessed with creating the most advanced, interactive doll on the market. Her niece gives her the inspiration she needs to successfully finish her prototype.
M3gan (Amie Donald), which stands for Model 3 Generative Android, is a robotic doll built with an advanced artificial intelligence, capable of self-learning with absolutely no controls in place. The next reasonable step of course is to pair M3gan with Cady to test the robot’s effectiveness and communication, which resembles a teenage, sarcastic, know-it-all type of tone. The doll exceeds all expectations, and it appears that Gemma has accomplished the impossible, until M3gan’s prime directive of protecting Cady from all physical and emotional harm naturally leads to very violent responses and a high body count.
Allison Williams, whose only other major film credit is from “Get Out,” headlines a very weak cast. She is apathetic in her role, devoid of emotion. Even upon learning her sister and her husband were tragically killed in an accident, she only displays minor annoyance at being their daughter’s new guardian. This lack of connectivity to her role destroys any audience interest in her character’s well-being.
On the other hand, Violet McGraw is a very capable young actress as she’s proven in films like “Black Widow” and “Doctor Sleep.” Ad-libbing typically comes with years of experience and Violet doesn’t yet have that skill, making her reliant on the script, which is incapable of providing decent enough dialogue for her to shine. The rest of the supporting cast are so atrocious they’re not worth mentioning.
This is Gerard Johnstone’s directorial debut in the U.S., and it’s clear he was handed a turd sandwich, so he decided to have some fun with it, which ended up being a saving grace. The screenplay has no creativity to it whatsoever, it’s a cookie cutter horror story that’s been done a thousand times. Within the first 30 minutes, audiences will know exactly how the film will end unless this is their very first horror film. Johnstone makes no effort to conceal the predictability of the story, effectively eliminating any and all suspense. In fact, all attempts at horror are downright lazy and conventional, resorting to jump scares at odd times in the film. This doesn’t even touch on the many plot holes and the feeble transition of this smart robot doll into a rampaging killing machine.
At this point, you may be asking how in the world does this movie have a 94% rotten tomatoes score? The only explanation is the random humor Gerard Johnstone throws in throughout the film, which is surprisingly laugh out loud funny. There are moments where he has M3gan break into song and dance, which was so absurd and ridiculous but hilarious nonetheless. M3gan singing “Titanium” to Cady is one of these moments to remember.
Think of “M3gan” as an updated version of “Child’s Play,” with a bit of “Terminator” and “I, Robot” mixed in, and is geared towards a teenage audience. Despite the positive scores, “M3gan” is a really bad movie that has moments of comical absurdity and stupidity that redeem some entertainment value which gives it a bonus star. It goes to show how much people are starving for laughter, Hollywood should listen.
This movie earns:
