A robotics engineer designs a life-like doll that is stylishly sadistic and murderous.
Noble intentions but awfully formulaic execution. You can’t get more Hollywood than that, so I will just keep it simple. I’ll start with the positives: Allison Williams (Gemma) is always great. She’s an excellent actress and gives impressive performances no matter what she’s in. Then, M3gan as a concept is the new Chucky – Child’s Play (1988). Don’t expect it to become a “classic” though despite her cool killing mode. Finally, Violet McGraw (Cady) is not one of the annoying child actors. She’s actually really good.
Now, for the negatives: Firstly, the character arc is way too obvious from the very beginning. At first, Gemma can’t even take care of her plants, and then you know that M3gan will wreak havoc, and she and her niece will come closer and have learned “valuable” lessons in life – it can’t get more obvious than that. Secondly, the underlying drama, the parents’ loss, the inciting incident that sets the cogs in motion, has been severely epidermically approached. Actually, that was the part that put me off the most. Finally, using montages to advance the story forward is the easy way out. It was great seeing Rocky (1976) becoming a better boxer in five minutes back then, but now? Hmmm… Not so much.
Producers Jason Blum and James Wan, respectable veterans in the horror genre, have nothing much to offer other than bloody entertainment. Director Gerald Johnstone, the one behind the great Housebound (2014), seems like he just had to work with whatever he had to work. Aleka Cooper’s script was meant to be bloodier and gorier, but again, the producers noted how well the trailer did on freaking Tik Tok and decided to water it down and address it to teenagers. Fair enough, at least now you know who it is meant for. Both Blum and Wan have exciting projects lined up, so I look forward to them.
So, there are positives, and there are negatives. Is it worth watching? Sure, why not? But primarily due to M3gan’s bat-$hit crazy artificial psychopathy. If I were to pitch that script, the tagline would be something along the lines of “Annabelle (2014) gets an upgrade”.
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