You Don’t Want To Miss ‘M3GAN’ The Doll’s Killer Debut

Megan, stylized as M3gan, stands for Model 3 Generative Android. She’s artificial intelligence in a four-foot silicon body. Blonde wig, gobs of eyeliner, and haute couture doll clothes complete the look. Following the death of both her parents, Cady (Violet McGraw) is sent to live with her aunt Gemma (the always reliable Allison Williams). Though she’s a brilliant robotics engineer at one of the world’s foremost toy company, Gemma isn’t quite parenting material. In a bid to create the next-gen of must-have toys, she creates Megan. It just so happens that Megan, in addition to drawing, singing, dancing, and boggling the mind of anyone who sees her, can also provide the kind of emotional support that Gemma’s ailing niece needs but she’s not able to give. The little girl and her doll bond like no little girl and girl have bonded before. But it’s not all fun and games when the sentient toy begins to challenge her programming, going rogue and “improving” Cady’s life by all means necessary. Those means, more often than not, involve murder.

An uproariously funny and well-timed creation, M3gan is accessible PG-13 horror done right. The movie, perhaps accidentally, hits theaters as AI has become increasingly part of the fabric of daily life. The second written collaboration between Akela Cooper and James Wan (Malignant), the film directed by Gerard Johnstone (who wrote and directed the New Zealand horror-comedy gem Housebound) taps right into the zeitgeist as if a cable into a motherboard. Though not scary in any traditional scene, M3gan trades in topical society anxieties. What happens when artificial intelligence exceeds the grasp of its creator? And what hubris leads us to believe that an exponentially accelerating learning model would continue to obey their inherently inferior human counterpart?

These are not new questions in the realm of science fiction and have been examined with greater depth in films like Ex Machina, Her, Terminator, The Matrix, Upgrade, and many, many more. The notion of artificial intelligence gaining unintended malicious sentience and rebelling against its protocol certainly isn’t fresh. What M3gan does – and does well – is approach this idea with one thing primarily on the brain: an almost programmatic level of fun.

More laugh-out-loud funny than other modern mainstream horror-comedies (Freaky, Happy Death Day), M3gan leans into all things silly. When Megan sings, she sings. When she dances, she dances. When she understands, she understands. And when she kills, she kills without mercy. And she does it all with an irreverent and knowing grin, splicing a campy and never-serious edge into what could have been familiar murder-doll material. M3gan thrives most when the doll splits the difference between charming and sinister; her uncanny valley looks, unnervingly calm Siri-voice, and robotic physicality effectively intensify the almost vaudeville act. Though the horror part remains light in memorable or inventive kills (the movie would have been even better if allowed to go truly bonkers in these moments), M3gan works surprisingly well without, even if I don’t buy the argument that reworking the film for a PG-13 rating made it “scarier”.

Emboldened by strong performances from Williams and McGraw, the heightened reality of M3gan works because the film is actually grounded in relatable human emotion. Cady has undergone a tragedy and is a changed child for it. Her ensuing attachment to Megan is thematically sound and psychologically cogent. That’s not to say that M3gan posits itself as a thing of dramatic weight – nor would it be described as “elevated horror” – but you never discount the characters’ circumstance because of bad writing or poor performances. Instead, the gravity the two leads bring elevate the shlock and make the campy elements pop off the screen with more definition, while allowing the supporting characters like Gemma’s egotist boss David (Ronny Chieng) to go full broad.

From a purely practical standpoint, Megan is a brilliant creation. Part-animatronic, part-CGI, and brought to live by a subtly sinister vocal performance by Jenna Davis, this singing, dancing murder doll is truly worth her weight in cryptocurrency. What could have been written as a modern revision of Chucky is instead a horror icon in her own right. The LGBTQ crowd has already assumed her as their own queer icon, showing Megan is a slay queen murderess with staying power. Without spoiling anything, the Cooper and Wan smartly leaves the door open for her return if the masses determine they can’t live without more living/killing dolls.

CONCLUSION: ‘M3gan’ sets the stage for a strong 2023 with a horror-comedy that actually brings the laughs. And plenty of them. Though its never very scary, this never-dull camp-fest serves up societal anxieties aplenty, leaning into its ridiculous premise to mock our reliance on technology in every aspect of our modern lives. The two leads are sturdy as can be. See it with a packed crowd.