Review: Killerdoll Horrorcomedy ‘M3GAN Is Delightfully Deranged
A rare phenomenon occurred on the Internet last fall. With a single 2.5-minute trailer for the film, the meteoric, memetic rise of a new star is forced into a vastly disposable space. But M3GAN is no ordinary girl. It's a realistic and powerful robot doll equipped with machine learning capabilities that makes Tamagotchi look like child's play.
A Terminator in Annabelle's wig, Chuck from The Bad Seed, or X Machine's evil sister Ava, the M3GAN has a glowing side eye and claps its hands. You can run, but you certainly can't hide, so say goodbye to your new horror movie obsession (and get ready for your next Halloween costume) in James Wan and Akela Cooper's delightfully wacky M3GAN. Behind the delightfully wacky "Malignant."
Director Gerard Johnston, Owen and Cooper skillfully present the script with the poise it deserves as a straight-forward horror film that doesn't blink an eye yet kicks the audience in the ribs. M3GAN is basically a ephemeral comedy before it becomes a horror movie that starts with laughs and taunts the audience before a terrifying onslaught of violence and trauma.
A unique tone is set by star Allison Williams, who has suddenly become one of our top horror actresses, bringing her famous campy horror style to movies like Get Out, Perfection and now M3GAN. Williams' clever emotional foreshadowing makes her characters elusive and hard to fit into predetermined binaries of good and bad.
In M3GAN, Williams is a doctor. A friend of Frankenstein's, he plays Gemma, a toy designer with robotics skills. He's hard at work on a Perpetual Petz prototype for his demanding funky toy boss, David (the great Ronnie Cheng), when he gets a call that his sister and brother died in an accident and he needs to take care of it. Custody of his niece Cady (Violet McGrath). Career-oriented Gemma isn't quite sure how to bond with a child, so she revives her aborted M3GAN project (played physically by Amy Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis) as a sort of friend to her lonely and grieving niece.
experienced And it's impressive, especially according to Cady, who quickly forms a bond with the wayward M3GAN when they impress each other. Gemma encourages M3GAN and Cady to show David a demo, and although they are happy to ignore Cady's therapists' warnings about potential problems, Gemma and Funky soon plan a public announcement for an expensive high-tech toy that can replace current parents. . But neither M3GAN nor Cady like to share their toys, and M3GAN's "learning protocol" is far more advanced and unregulated than Gemma imagined.
M3GAN plays with ideas that resonate in all techno horror: our overconfidence and misguided reliance on machines and technology, whether they walk or speak as echoes of humanity. But "M3GAN" brings a new element to the mix: parental terror. What "learning protocols" do parents pass on to fascinating animals without fully understanding them?
Quirky and funny, the M3GAN gives more laughs than scares, but the glossy finish hides some interesting clues about the M3GAN motherboard. If HAL-9000 could see M3GAN and his dance moves, he would be really proud right now. M3GAN more than deserves your visit to the theater and its status in the meme folder.
Cathy Walsh is a film critic for the Tribune News Service.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
