Horrorfest 2023: M3GAN

M3GAN

Written by Akela Cooper

Directed by Gerard Johnstone

Starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Jenna Davis and Amie Donald

USA, 2023

When I first saw the trailer for M3GAN, I wasn't super excited to see it. It had a bunch of stuff I'm kind of sick of, mostly a killer kid. I'm not a huge fan of killer kids in action movies or comic book movies or anything else, let alone horror. It's like, I get it -- kids are innocent so it's super edgy to have one who kills people. Ho-hum, been there, seen that. On top of that it was about the evils of technology which is like so played out. And the final nail in the coffin was the trailer featured the titular little kid robot, M3GAN, doing a weird little dance, and Wednesday Addams had JUST been everywhere during HER weird little dance.

But guess what? I watched it anyway! I don't know if you have ever heard this one before, but you should never judge a movie by its trailer. Turns out, it's campy fun and better than it has to be. M3GAN is the tale of a recently orphaned little girl (Violet McGraw) who falls in with her not-so-good-with-kids aunt (Allison Williams) who happens to be a career-obsessed robotics wizard who works for a toy company. Her latest toy, an interactive robot pet that farts, is on its way out, but her pet project, codenamed M3GAN, is an interactive best pal in the form of a four-foot-tall little girl who can do basically anything you want, including act as a surrogate parent if you're not-so-good-with-kids. When this miracle of engineering gets fast-tracked, Williams uses her niece as a sort of test subject to "pair" with M3GAN and spend as much time with her as she can, so M3GAN will "learn" enough to really wow the guys from corporate, or something.

None of that really matters because what we're here for is for the robot girl going kill crazy, and she does. But! That's all the stuff you expect from the movie. And, while it's done better than it could be, the stuff that really makes this movie worth watching is the stuff with Allison Williams and her niece. This movie takes the unexpected route of showing just how damaging entrusting your child to be raised by a toy can really be -- even an almost-as-good-as-real-girl. The niece becomes withdrawn, too attached to M3GAN, defiant, quick to anger -- you know, all the stuff you don't want out of a kid. You can tell this movie has some brains behind it the way it follows all this stuff to its seemingly logical conclusion, and the movie is stronger for it -- it has more going on than M3GAN just weird-dancing people to death.

It should be noted here that M3GAN brought to life by two actresses -- Amie Donald, who embodies the robot and Jenna Davis, who supplies the voice. The two of them, and the writers, director, and production team, have successfully created a horror icon you can love to hate, something that has been missing in movies lately. And don't say that killer doll Annabelle or something, compared to M3GAN Annabelle has about as much personality as a mudflap. I'm talking the good old days of Freddy Krueger, when you could enjoy a villain in a horror movie, who was an original and memorable character. I'd bring up Chucky but that's a little too on-the-nose.

There are a couple things here that don't quite add up. For instance, as mentioned before, the doll is sold partially on the merits of it being able to parent your kid, so we see it doing stuff like constantly reminding her kid to wash her hands after going to the bathroom. Now, I'm no expert, but when I was a kid I feel like some of the things I liked about my friends is they did NOT nag all the time, so I kinda feel like in real life M3GAN would have to dial it down a little for kids to actually want to hang around her, but I guess that's just a minor gripe in an overall pretty good flick.