REVIEW: ‘M3GAN’ Is Iconic

While we may make jokes about punting Chucky or the puppets from Puppet Masters, killer toys are still firmly placed in our pop culture consciousness. To horror, these killer childhood playmates are essential to the genre, and when they embrace camp and spectacle, they shine. To put it simply, M3GAN, like many of the toy dolls before her, is iconic.

In the film, the titular M3GAN is a marvel of artificial intelligence, a life-like doll programmed to be a child’s greatest companion and a parent’s greatest ally. She is supposed to be the only toy a child will ever need, and the high price tag comes with the ability to integrate into the family and not just sit on a window sill. Designed by brilliant toy-company roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams), M3GAN can listen, watch, and learn as she becomes a friend and teacher, playmate, and protector, for the child she is bonded to. When Gemma suddenly becomes the caretaker of her orphaned 8-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), Gemma is unsure and unprepared to be a parent—something she never wanted to be. Under intense pressure at work, Gemma decides to pair her M3GAN prototype with Cady in an attempt to resolve both problems—a decision that will have unimaginable consequences.

An Atomic Monster production, M3GAN is directed by Gerard Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper and James Wan. It’s no mystery why it has the same kinetic chaos energy that Malignant did, and as I said with that movie, I want more. I want more absurdity and humor and absolute “what the fuck” moments in horror in a way that embraces franticness and excitement. Don’t get me wrong, I love cerebral or cathartic horror, but movies like M3GAN feel special. Why? Well, M3GAN throws caution to the wind and runs with its premise without stopping. We see some discussion of grief and confront complex emotions that are actually well-handled, given the absurd and uncanny valley the film lives in for almost its entire runtime.

M3GAN is immediately iconic because it isn’t afraid to be violent, and at the same time, it isn’t afraid to be on-the-nose funny. It isn’t afraid to embrace camp and fun in one sequence and then have a creepy child doll running on all fours after a terror of a child in the next. There is so much to love about the film, especially the titular and horrifying doll at its center. To be honest, multiple times throughout the film, I was just thankful I had my tubes tied. The insufferable child and the aggressive and creepy doll combination works so exceptionally well that their toxic symbiotic relationship is fascinating and unnerving all at once. The codependent bond facilitates much of the film’s tension and allows it to deliver fun punches of fear throughout the mostly unserious narrative, making this film shine.

But the real success of this film is all thanks to Amie Donald, the real girl behind the fake one. This movie is hers and hers alone, and I can’t wait to see her performance take its place in horror history next to Chucky and Tiffany. And while the comparisons to the other killer dolls are there, it’s the way the film and M3GAN portray her murders and her violence that stand out. M3GAN is built on the tried and tested sci-fi motive of over-optimizing towards the goal for which you were built; however, the film manages to transcend that as well.

Truthfully, from the trailer to the viral marketing campaigns, I knew I would enjoy M3GAN. That said, I was not expecting to think it was near perfect. With M3GAN, Johnstone, Cooper, and Wan show an understanding of genre and how to make their audience feel everything. They can make them laugh, cringe, and jump, never oscillating between distinct genres but instead bringing out the multitudes within horror. But for all the fancy things I could write about narrative and filmmaking, what really matters is that M3GAN is a blast and captures everything that makes killer toy movies great.

M3GAN is in theaters January 6, 2023.