Movie Review: M3GAN

  

The initial concept of M3GAN that the trailers pitched was one that wasn't all to unfamiliar to me. The idea of a killer doll has probably been presented in horror films too many times to count, with the biggest example being Chucky from the Child's Play series. What drew me to want to give M3GAN a fair shot though was it was taking the killer doll idea and trying to do something a little bit different. What if the doll was in the form of a humanoid girl? What if this doll was programmed by an AI which was designed to protect and care for it's host with no parameters or exceptions on how to interpret that instruction? The trailers convinced me this wasn't going to be your typical killer doll film and it would be trying something very different.  Sadly though, after all that promise I found myself coming out of watching M3GAN with nothing much good to say about it. On the whole it is a underwhelming film with very little to it which showed it was taking advantage of it's unique premise.

Directed by Gerard Johnstone with a script written by Akela Cooper alongside producer James Wan, M3GAN follows a toy designer called Gemma (Played by Allison Williams) who works on creating high-grade dolls which utilize artificial intelligence to support their function. After her sister dies in a tragic car crash, Gemma ends up taking custody of her niece Cady who happened to be the sole survivor of the accident. Seeing that she is lonely and struggling to face the trauma of losing her parents, Gemma gets inspired to create a new android doll which will function to support Cady and protect her both physically and emotionally. While M3GAN's core function works as planned initially, several encounters end up forcing M3GAN to begin to take her protective instruction to an extreme and deadly level. The film then follows Gemma as she attempts to deduce what is happening to M3GAN all the while attempting to detach Cady's emotional attachment to the doll before it's too late. 

There's nothing inherently wrong with the initial concept in my eyes, it's a compelling setup based on the idea of AI mis-interpreting an instruction and taking extreme measures to fulfil it's objective. Where my issues stem from in regards to the story comes from how poorly paced and written it feels. The film struggles majorly to deploy this concept in a structure that feels in any sense coherent. It's filled to the brim with scenes which just feel disjointed with little to no effort to try develop the story or it's characters within them. There's no gradual tension or buildup within the movie as I feel M3GAN's willingness to kill comes into play too quickly with no exploration. The characterization of the people within this film feels too shallow as well. No one ever really feels like a real genuine person in this story. People are either shallow as hell or too over the top to be received as genuine within the confines of this narrative. Even the kills in themselves which make a good chunk of the appeal behind these films feel so small and undercooked. M3GAN's deadly capability is never really explored on screen and when it's shown it's cut away or ended way too quickly. 

This feels like a film which would have greatly benefitted from one or two more re-writes before it proceeded to shooting. This is a film which is comprised of scenes but there's no love or desire behind fitting them all together in a fashion which makes any lick of sense. It just comes off like it banked on it's concept alone and very little else. Clearly that worked because it grossed a ton of money and sequel was greenlit quite quickly. My only hope is the sequel actually tries to develop these characters and M3GAN rather than rely on rehashing what feels like a pretty shallow first attempt.