Imagine if the toy company Hasbro merged with tech company Apple and they came up with an idea for a “Chucky-like” doll for kids to talk to and play with and also to learn from. That’s the initial premise for M3GAN (which stands for Model 3 Generation Android), as the film starts innocently with a fake advert for a fake toy that mildly resembles a Furby, if you’re old enough to remember what a Furby is, but it is more technologically advanced. It can react to what you say instead of adhering to a scripted list of phrases. Unfortunately one kid, Cady, plays with one in a car with her parents at the wrong moment on an icy road which results in her sadly losing both parents. This is the starting point for M3GAN.
As Cady, who is played Violet McGraw, is a young innocent child who is now orphaned she needs a responsible adult to care and look after her, a guardian so to speak, and so she lands on her Aunt’s doorstep. It just so happens that her Aunt works for Funki, the fake toy company, and it is her Aunt Gemma, played by Allison Williams, who introduces Cady to a prototype of a new toy doll called M3GAN which is essentially an A.I. doll. As the story progresses the film explores themes of grief, parenthood, technological advancements and attachment issues with modern devices such as tablets and mobile phones. M3GAN is essentially a modernised look at a media-controlled world of technology and how it affects a child’s learning and development. For a horror film that sounds pretty deep, but it’s also highly entertaining and engrossing.
M3GAN is a quirky film, it doesn’t directly dive into the horror genre until around halfway through the film when the doll starts spying on the next-door neighbour, until then it acts as a dysfunctional family drama with Gemma and Cady struggling to fit into their new lifestyle as a guardian and a child. When M3GAN is introduced we are soon caught up in the argument of whether it is wise for Cady to dump her grief and emotions onto a lifeless object. The bond between Cady and M3GAN is the key relationship and the film explores the positive and negative aspects of it. Cady is able to see a human side to M3GAN which Gemma doesn’t, but at the same time M3GAN learns about grief and death from Cady and as a result goes against her programming to do anything to protect Cady from it. It is an incredibly smart film that manages to ask and answer a lot of questions surrounding a child’s perspective on death.
With a strong story and strong characters, you would have thought that would be enough to sell the film, but M3GAN can be quite quirky and weird at times, like when M3GAN sings Titanium to Cady in the form of a lullaby or when M3GAN performs a weird Tik Tok dance before killing someone near the end of the film. These choices are questionable but they do add to the unique style the film possesses even if they are unneeded for the story. M3GAN is brought to life convincingly and you almost forget that there is an actress underneath the wig and doll-like mask -- young child actress Amie Donald plays M3GAN. As a result, M3GAN looks and feels like one of the creepiest dolls in recent cinema history since the invention of Chucky.
★★★★☆
4/5
Final Verdict:
M3GAN is a film with a lot of stories to explore and a lot of themes to address. It is never boring and it is highly entertaining. Allison Williams and Violet McGraw give terrific performances as Gemma and Cady and they make us, the audience, completely believe that M3GAN is a real toy doll with their interactions with her. The deaths go all out, even with a few wobbly moments near the end, but the balance of horror and drama is what makes the film work. You care about the characters enough to care about whether they survive or not. M3GAN offers plenty of surprises and it’ll be interesting to see where they take her next.
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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