M3GAN Movie Review: Perfect Balance Sought For A New Horror Icon
Cast: Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
M3GAN (M3GAN (Megan)) is a horror/sci-fi film signed by Gerard Johnstone coming worldwide on 6th January 2023. From a rather trivial incipit and addressed in other films, M3GAN (Megan) tries to draw a contemporary message very close to current viewers, speaking of our relationship with today’s technology through a narrative that takes all its possibilities to the extreme, in a crazy and strangely tragicomic way. From the excess, however, rather interesting, and rather multifaceted reasoning originates as a whole, even if it is addressed at times in an all too superficial and “censored” way. Starring the very young Amie Donald and Violet McGraw, supported by a cast that also includes Allison Williams and Ronny Chieng, along with Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps and many others, M3GAN is directed by Gerard Johnstone and produced in collaboration with the historic Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster.
M3GAN sees the inventor Gemma, as well as overwhelmed by work, suddenly the only person having to take care of her little niece Cady, recently orphaned and deeply marked by the loss of her parents. Gemma thus decides, feeling completely inadequate as Cady’s guardian, to finally carry out the project that could change her life, giving a change to her job position and to the company in which she is employed. We are talking about M3GAN, an android doll equipped with artificial intelligence and made in life-size. Able to play with the girl with whom she is associated, M3GAN is so matched with Cady, that she feels over her time, more and more connected and fond of her new best friend M3GAN. The doll knows how to listen to her, and learns from her, they play together and become more and more protective of her. At least until M3GAN begins to acquire more and more independence, autonomy and aggressiveness.
M3GAN Movie Review: The Story Plot
Little Katie (Violet McGraw) has recently lost her parents in a car accident caused by a snowstorm. She found herself in her aunt’s house, she is unable in any way to overcome this morning. Gemma (Allison Williams), on the other hand, is a career woman. She is certainly one of the brightest minds of our century, and specializes in robotics, working in a huge company that uses her skills to beat the competition with increasingly advanced toys. Finding herself, however, her niece in her house doesn’t have the slightest idea or even intention of taking care of her, always and completely concentrating on her work.
So, she decides to combine business with pleasure and transforms one of her most ambitious projects by adapting it to the emotional needs of the little girl. From everything M3GAN (Megan) is created, an extremely intelligent robot equipped with an AI that allows her not only to understand the elements of the world around her but to learn more and more notions based on the experiences she lives alongside her “main user”. The idea behind her birth is precisely that of a “perfect toy that remains constantly close to the child for every need of her, managing to understand the daily needs and solving them from time to time”.
A kind of “guardian”, in short, that allows parents to have fun without being too behind their children. M3GAN (Megan)‘s main task is to defend Katie and not let anything bad happen to her. Over time, however, the doll and the girl develop an unhealthy relationship of co-dependence that explodes in even brutal gestures, always about the main task. What will be the doll’s reasons, if she has any? Even the side characters, who often occupy a few minutes on the screen, and with few jokes, contribute to making the M3GAN universe complete in every form.
Black humor, restlessness, tension, real comic devices and moments of sweetness between the doll and the little girl give the film M3GAN its personality, placing itself on a different step concerning those products that have killer dolls as protagonists. M3GAN is an android doll, but in the film, she is nothing more than exchanged, presented, and seen as something more, a risk that perhaps one could take with toys endowed with intelligence. Thus, the doll is also the subtle symbol of harmful overprotectiveness and continuous control that would confer peace and calm in the face of those dangers that always appear around the corner. M3GAN loves to play, dance, sing, and read, but also kills. Exploding with cruelty, the film thus prepares scene after scene, as if M3GAN‘s were a process of growth, for the transformation of the doll into a real and real killer without mercy, from a controlled game to a real player that she controls.
M3GAN Review and Analysis
M3GAN alludes to the value and diffusion of smart devices that increasingly become part of people’s lives. Useful in everyday life and specialized in areas such as sports, safety, and health, also involving means of transport or leisure tools for spending free time, smart devices are making a difference. Nothing seems to suggest that one day we can’t even get too smart toys that in a certain sense simplify life, with an android like M3GAN, for both children and parents. M3GAN could be the perfect doll for Cady and any other child and security for any mother or father aware that somehow, their child will never be alone. M3GANit entertains, amuses, and delicately creates a microcosm that also allows us to glimpse a current situation adhering to everything we know and which, over the years, will contribute to that technological revolution that continues to surprise us.
But the main intention of M3GAN is another, so the film is a horror for everyone, which occasionally manages to surprise, combining alternating shots and montages of hilarity and violence. Just as M3GAN‘s image alone manages to be both ironic, sweet and creepy, so photography leaves no room for misunderstandings, with chromatic tints that are charged with cold colors as M3GAN slowly begins to reveal itself: whether it is day or night, the darkness she takes possession of both the super smart doll and the scene where best friend becomes the worst enemy. The film produced by Jason Blum and James Wan also winks at the market in the technological and digital sector, which lives only to change people’s lives for the better.
A torment and continuous anguish that then arrives at the hoped-for epilogue, at the fulfillment of a revolutionary article, which everyone will buy as soon as they have the chance. This is how everything about M3GANit’s not as improbable as it may seem: the android doll passes the security checks, is the perfect friend, the big sister, the social worker, and, at a business and economic level, the future most sought-after product in the world. M3GAN thus joins those killer dolls that gave birth to sequels and subsequently to real franchises, also considering that Jason Blum and James Wan are among the producers. M3GAN, defined as a new horror icon, could therefore return to the screens soon.
Starting from the very idea that leads Gemma to create this robot, we can find one of the central themes of the film: the alienation of the individual and the addiction to technology. This young career woman doesn’t care about the fate of her niece and what she is going through following her parental disappearance. He doesn’t stop even for a second to empathize with her, perhaps trying to understand the pain that haunts her. Being projected only towards her work, and an unbridled careerist, she seems fit to channel her niece’s pain to create the invention of the century, and at the same time to keep her away from her so she doesn’t have to pay attention to it. M3GAN (Megan) was born just like a “tool to keep children busy” and live their adult life “undisturbed”. The message behind this invention is fundamentally wrong, and the director tends to dwell continuously on this point.
Furthermore, the little girl, caught in an extremely delicate moment of her life, and of total emotional exposure, finds in this doll, in this advanced technology, the only “true” support in an extremely difficult moment in her life. Hence the addiction to something that gradually takes on a very different value in her eyes, no longer a simple tool for entertainment but an essential element of her life with a name and its own “identity”. Thus, the film tries to translate this relationship by speaking of our dependence on technology and the various comforts it offers. We are slaves of something that we consider essential as Katie is addicted to M3GAN (Megan) without ever realizing it
From a formal point of view, M3GAN (Megan) is filmed quite well. It is a film that oscillates continuously between a particularly sadistic and theatrical humor, and quotations from genre cinema. Its narrative simplicity goes well with the underlying themes, even if one of its greatest limitations lies precisely in the rhythm. The story proceeds quickly, perhaps even too much and in some situations, it does not take the right breath to face even heavy dynamics, emotionally speaking.
M3GAN Review: The Last Words
M3GAN (Megan) takes advantage of an extremely predictable plot to talk about our present. The general violence of an instrument that is the son of man and his needs for him, the rebellion, even if partial, and the bloody reaction to a morally labile present, are the result of a technological derivation perfectly consistent with the darkest folds of human careerism. Gathering within itself a wide range of familiar elements, this film gives us, with her merciless gaze, an extremely negative fresco of humanity, first of all talking about our limits and the selfishness that has characterized us for centuries, to then make us collide with the consequences born of our nature.
