Miss Flicks

M3GAN: Film Review

A new horror icon has been born! The robotic doll M3GAN is sure to be a staple in the horror genre for years to come because she is both unsettling and hilarious at the same time.

The film stars Allison Williams as Gemma, a roboticist who is developing a prototype of a life-like artificially intelligent doll named M3GAN in secret at the toy company Funki in Seattle. When she becomes the guardian of her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) after her parents die in a car crash, Gemma pairs M3GAN with Cady, making them lifelong companions. However, M3GAN hasn’t been fully tested and she takes the instruction of protecting Cady a bit too seriously.

M3GAN is a great time at the movies. It is by no means perfect but it is so much fun and far more entertaining than I expected it to be. I was surprised by how much I laughed at this – the film doesn’t take itself seriously and there are tons of light-hearted lines, especially from Gemma’s boss David (Ronny Chieng). Some people in my screening seemed to find almost everything hilarious but my laughter wasn’t quite so frequent. It’s definitely worth seeing with a crowd though because hearing everybody else’s reactions made the experience even better.

Director Gerard Johnstone has openly admitted to making cuts to M3GAN to reach a lower age rating. I understand that decision from a financial perspective but I think M3GAN would have been more effective if it had more blood and gore. Johnstone cuts around M3GAN’s acts of violence so you only get a fleeting image of what she has done – there are no gruesome shots of injury details – and your imagination has to do the rest.

Because I knew we weren’t going to see anything too graphic, I didn’t find M3GAN – both the doll and the film – particularly scary. She is very creepy, for sure, and there’s a certain tension in not knowing where she is and what she’s going to do next, but it’s very hard to take a small singing and dancing doll seriously as a killing machine. Despite this, she is a fantastic horror creation and hats off to Amie Donald (the physical body), Jenna Davis (the voice) and the puppet and animatronic teams for bringing her to life.

After Get Out and The Perfection, Williams is becoming something of a horror staple herself. She grounds the story as much as possible and is unwittingly funny because she doesn’t know how to be a parent. McGraw does well for a child star, with Cady getting increasingly attached and protective over M3GAN.

M3GAN would have been a more effective horror if it let loose with the gore, but it’s a fun, family-friendly addition to the genre.

In cinemas from Friday 13th January