M3GAN (2023)

 

Streaming Service: Peacock

Movie Name/Year: M3GAN (2023)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Horror

Length: 1h 42min

Rating: Unrated

Production/Distribution: Atomic Monster, Blumhouse Productions, Divide/Conquer, Universal Pictures, New Zealand Film Commission, Peacock, Studio Distribution Services (SDS), Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (UPHE), Universal Pictures International (UPI)

Director: Gerard Johnstone

Writers: Akela Cooper, James Wan

Actors: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Amy Usherwood, Arlo Green, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jack Cassidy, Jen Van Epps, Jenna Davis, Kira Josephson, Lori Dungey, Michael Saccente, Millen Baird, Natasha Kojic, Ronny Chieng, Stephane Garneau

 

IMDb Blurb: A robotics engineer at a toy company builds a life-like doll that begins to take on a life of its own.

 

Selina’s Point of View:

I figured M3GAN would be a bit on the corny side, but still a fun watch. I was dead-on with my expectations.

M3GAN followed just about every killer-AI trope there is out there. I’d be hard-pressed to call much of it original, but it did feel like the tropes were well used. It would have been very easy for M3GAN to just start cramming as much as it could into the story without rhyme or reason. Instead, it worked. Mostly.

 

 

It may seem a little strange to say, but I didn’t get as much of that uncanny valley feel from the robot as I thought I would. In fact, I got more from Paul Dano’s (Knight and Day, Swiss Army Man, The Fabelmans) Riddler in The Batman. Without that feeling, there were parts of the flick that didn’t hit as hard as they could have. It made things feel more silly than serious.

I did appreciate a bit of the psychological aspect that was thrown in. It was an interesting perspective, especially in the context of grief.

I enjoyed M3GAN, but I was hoping for something a little more serious than I got. It’s still something fun to watch with friends and a six-pack, though.

 

 

Cat’s Point of View:

The prospect of watching M3GAN made my inner sci-fi geeky heart happy. I’m generally down to watch any production that explores AI and robotics and their future interactions with humankind. For now they may be fiction, but I don’t anticipate that lasting much longer. Lets get those cautionary tales out there and prevent Skynet, right? 

All in all, I generally enjoyed my experience with M3GAN. 

The doll was seriously creepy and gave me futuristic, if only slightly less homicidal, Chucky vibes. I really appreciated how they kept the face of the android companion just somewhere uncomfortably between a real human’s and that of your typical porcelain doll. It made the moments interacting with people who didn’t know what M3GAN was more believable. 

 

I enjoyed the cast’s performances and how M3GAN embraced its own camp and meta nature. Everything was a bit predictable - but really, for this sort of movie there’s not a lot that it could have done that wouldn’t have been so. Still, there was something missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. As a horror movie that blended comedy along with the psychology of grief into a story about a murderous toy, it delivered where it counted. 

I do have to give the production team credit for the avenues they took with the story to leave it open for sequel potential. In fact, Blumhouse announced in January, shortly after this film’s release, that there will be a M3GAN 2.0 - which is, at this time, the current working title of the next movie. 

 

I actually ended up watching M3GAN twice. I hadn’t realized initially that it released as an unrated version when it hit streaming in addition to the PG-13 film that was in theaters. My 19-year-old daughter and I viewed it as soon as it became available on Xfinity On-Demand, and it turned out to be the PG-13 version. I watched the unrated one in preparation for this review today. I was rather surprised that there wasn’t a lot of difference between them. I actually preferred the PG-13 cut better. 

For those wondering why, the PG-13 cut was more refined and the horror was more effective with slightly less gore, or some actions happening off-camera. The body count, all general plot points, and set pieces all remained the same. If there had been a more expansive difference between the versions, I would understand the unrated release better. As it stands, I’m just scratching my head in confusion - because the “extras” the lack of rating allowed didn’t make that cut any better. I digress.

My daughter and I did enjoy our trippy romp through the cut-throat toy industry. My advice would be to just not expect or assume too much from the outset. The toy developers here were obviously not following Isaac Asimov’s (1920-1992) laws of robotics. 

 

 

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 93%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score –78%

Metascore – 72%

Metacritic User Score – 6.8/10

IMDB Score – 6.4/10

 

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 3.5/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 3.5/5

 

Trust the Dice: Parental Guidance Rating: There are 2 versions of this movie. The Unrated version is closer to R and there is also an MPAA rated PG-13 version.

 

Movie Trailer: