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 (020923)
M3gan is a crowd pleasing sci-f/i horror flick with many comedic elements which
efficiently fuses together some of the best (and a few of the worst) plot
elements of Child’s Play, Robocop, The Bad Seed, and also the obscure Hammer
film, Frankenstein Created Woman. The name stands for Model 3 Generative
Android.
The movie has been an unexpected hit. It only cost 12 million dollars and at
this point it has already grossed more than 150 million which makes it the
biggest grossing film of 2023 (yes, I know it is still early.) It is kind of a
shame because although the film does provide some fun moments, it is nowhere as
thoughtful or original as many of the Oscar films (such as
Tar,
Women Talking and
Triangle of Sadness)
that have already tanked at the box office.
M3gan herself (voiced by 15-year-old future star Jenna Davis) is an extremely
impressive fictional creation. She is like an exaggerated Barbie doll combining
all this society’s ideals of female beauty with the ruthlessness of a serial
killer. Oh, and she also has an extremely sinister dance. (almost as memorable
as the one on
Wednesday
). Furthermore, if viewers go on the Facebook page for
the movie and leave a comment, they will start getting disturbing and quasi
threatening texts in the robot’s voice. It is one of the most ingenious
publicity gimmicks since the heyday of B-movie schlock-master William Castle.
It was made by the New Zealand born director who also made Jaquie Brown Diaries
and Housebound (I never heard of them either). It was written by the better
known James Wan who is also responsible for the popular
Conjuring
series, which
is the highest grossing ever horror film franchise, as well as the Insidious and
Aquaman films.
Allison Williams (Get Out) is fine portraying Gemma, a serious, over worked
robot designer. Her sister and brother in law are unexpectedly killed in a
tragic car accident, but their daughter, Cady (Violet McGraw) survives. Gemma is
well intentioned, but she has poor parenting skills, so she fast tracks a
project she is working on, and creates a robot companion to serve as both her
neglected niece’s BFF and as her surrogate parent.
The robot M3gan becomes attached to Cady almost immediately and seems to become
a perfect companion. But some problems develop. M3gan above all is programmed
to protect Cady, but she takes it way too far. When a neighbor’s dog poses acts
threatening towards Cady, the animal is found dead, and soon the human bodies
begin to pile up. M3gan is the biggest reason that Cady gets over the grief over
her parent’s death, so it is somewhat understandable that her maker is reluctant
to turn her off even when she begins something is amiss with her programming.
Also M3gan is a protype, and Gemma’s employers want to mass produce the doll
and Gemma’s job is on the line if she does not succeed. They have flooded the
media with M3gan commercials which are reminiscent to the satirical ones in
Robocop.
Both the fembot in M3gan and the female creature in Frankenstein Created Woman
(played by Susan Denberg) seem at first to be ideal artificial female creations,
but both later develop troublesome personalities and eventually turn against
their creators. Like the original Frankenstein (which is an influence on most
artificial being films) M3gan suggests that there should be limits to
technology and just because something can be done scientifically does not mean
it should. But this has all been said many times in better films and novels. But
more interestingly, the film also suggests (unlike Ray Bradbury's "I Sing the
Body Electric" which became a great Twilight Zone episode) that an
artificial being can never be a substitute for a real family relation, and
overly depending on a substitute parent can actually drive apart real family
members. Early on in the film a female social worker even warns M3gan’s creator
about this.
M3gan was originally planned as an R film, but it was apparently neutered in
order to receive a PG 13 rating. Perhaps this was done to allow younger teens in
to see the film which is probably a big part of the target audience (If I was
13 this might be the film I most want to see). But while it is often successful,
for my taste there is a little too much comedy and cuteness in it. It is rarely
genuinely scary, and if there were a bit more gore and horror elements to
balance out the comedy, this film could have been as good as Return of the
Living Dead (1985). It falls just a little short-but it is far better than
either the somewhat similar, Frankenhooker (1990) or Eve of Destruction (1991).
The film would be better if the third Act were not so strictly by the numbers, but those not expecting too much originality may have a reasonably good time.
The actual character of M3gan though is a worthwhile horror protagonist. It is
shocking to see murderous acts committed by an unthreatening looking creature
resembling a 14 year old girl (in this way it is reminiscent of The Bad Seed),
and some viewers might want to get in on the ground floor of a new horror
franchise before it gets stale. I would much rather see another M3gan film than
another Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream or Friday the 13th.
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