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M3GAN: Won't Somebody Think of the Children?


Every January like clockwork there always seems to be a new horror flick to kick off the movie year -usually one shuttled there by a studio with seemingly little confidence in it where it can be drowned out by awards contenders seeing wide release and the couple leftover blockbusters that came out around Christmas. For 2023, that distinction belongs to M3GAN, a Blumhouse production and new spin on the “evil doll” trope, which in spite of its’ apparently hackneyed nature has some notable creative bonafides behind it, including producer James Wan and writer Akela Cooper, both hot off of their unexpected 2021 success Malignant.
Cooper especially is an asset, as ultimately her script is the vital component that keeps M3GAN from being your typical trash January horror. In fact on the contrary it proves  to be a solid thriller with a curious foundation of sharp satire more interesting than your average Chucky or Annabelle movie.
Directed by the relatively unknown Gerard Johnstone, it’s a movie with a pretty opaque axe to grind from the start -opening with a brash, obnoxious, and highly realistic commercial for a kids’ toy that is controlled via tablet and looks like an even creepier version of a Furby. Naturally our about eight-year-old protagonist when we meet her a scene later is obsessed with the damn thing. She shortly loses her parents in a car accident and is put into the custody of her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) who works at that very toy company as a roboticist -and whose lack of parental enthusiasm and blatant disregard provides for the movies’ other major subject of ire. Eventually she sees a despondent Cady (Violet McGraw) as a fitting guinea pig for her ambitious toy proposal: a sophisticated A.I. doll called M3GAN that can bond with a child.
M3GAN is played by Amie Donald, with a voice provided by Jenna Davis, wearing a mask with features enhanced through CG makeup effects. Combined they make for a character who is pretty instantly unnerving, even without all the preexisting baggage of this particular brand of horror, and the movie is acutely aware of that. Before she’s even functioning, a test gone wrong results in a pretty creepy expression and even her earliest lines of dialogue are tinged with a strong note of hostility. Cooper is quite open about where this is going, because the evil doll itself isn’t what’s really in focus. There’s no ghost or demon possession involved here; M3GAN honestly has less in common with Child’s Play and more with something like Jurassic Park. Because M3GAN is a movie about technology gone too far.
That may sound a bit rote of a theme and the movie does notably evoke Terminator in a few key moments, but its' anti-technology sentiment is backed up with some genuine validation. A big part of that is just in how believable M3GAN looks –not in terms of just the CG being so lifelike and impressive, but in the specific ways in which the CG looks so lifelike and impressive. If you’ve seen some of those clips of robot installations or even products out of places like China and Japan, you’ll note how closely M3GAN seems to resemble them, and implicitly how close we are to a doll like M3GAN being a reality. That might be the movie’s scariest attribute, not because of the classical homicidal A.I. tropes, but because of what M3GAN represents in the context of child-rearing. A psychologist in the movie even notes directly how a girl like Cady, especially feeling vulnerable and alone, could easily grow more attached to a toy calibrated to her every whim than to a parent uninterested in providing love and oversight themselves. It’s the extreme example of the “TV raising your kids” argument, but more sound and potent.
And the fact that it’s coupled with a decided cynicism towards toy manufacturing and corporate exploitation makes the movie feel all the more venomous in its’ intents. The machine of the tech industry is intertwined with disaffected parenting, and all to the severe detriment of the mental health of the child. It’s for this reason that M3GAN, again fairly consciously, is easy to engage with. She's a malicious entity, but for Cady's sake only moderately worse than the company and mother-figure exploiting her -exploiting them both. The fact that M3GAN is so much better at listening and responding and caring for Cady than the human beings in her life is a statement both sad and scary. And its’ smart that the movie hones in on that, using it as a way to temper M3GAN in spite of it all. One can’t help but like this creepy doll a little when she is the only figure providing Cady with what she needs.
This aspect too, Johnstone is very aware of, and because of it there’s a particularly fun, camp sensibility to much of the horror of this film. Like in the fact that M3GAN clearly delights in being ominous, using coded language when someone expresses fear or suspicion around her. And her victims tend to be folks who unequivocally deserve it. Without spoiling anything, the movie gets around a certain taboo in horror as it concerns what kinds of characters can be killed off by simply making the person in question the most detestable example possible. The movie leans into this and the satirical aspects rather well, not afraid of it delineating the horror, because at the end of the day the point is more important than the genre hallmarks. And there’s a certain thrill to the movie being kinda creepy and fun at the same time -especially for the climax.
The ending is the one place where the movie seems to acquiesce to the typical side of genre convention, albeit with some good snappy dialogue from M3GAN herself. And the films’ efforts to be sincere with the relationship between Gemma and Cady don’t quite work either. Both Williams and McGraw are very good (ample performances in Blumhouse horror movies’ run in Violet’s family it seems), but the gradual coming together between the two and Gemma seeing the error of her ways doesn’t ring with the believability it should, as much as those beats are vital to the movies’ thesis.  And as with many a Blumhouse production, its’ filmmaking is perfectly competent, but doesn’t ever do anything new or particularly clever to stand among the greats of modern horror.
M3GAN is still a good time though; certainly it’s not one to fade fast the way typical January horror movies do (does anyone remember Winchester?). Already it’s got a sequel in development, the movie ending with a clear if not very creative set-up. And yet, the set-up for this movie wasn’t original either -it still worked great, so the follow-up has every opportunity to impress as well. M3GAN has a lot of potential as a representation of our technological fears, I’d be curious to see where she goes.

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