Mark Reviews Movies: M3GAN

M3GAN, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 5, 2023

"Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed," says a detective after chuckling about a gruesome detail in the mysterious death of a kid. Under normal circumstances, an apology would be necessary, but there's little normal about M3GAN or, for that matter, M3GAN, the sentient robot doll that determines killing is the best way to protect its human owner. Like the title character, this film is warped and twisted, but it's also pretty funny, because director Gerard Johnstone lets us in on the demented joke.

Some of that humor is satirical, especially when it comes to the central conceit. Here, Gemma (Allison Williams) becomes the legal guardian of her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), after the girl's parents are killed in a tragic but perfectly timed car accident (They get stranded in some snow on the road, openly wonder how long it will take for a snow plow to show up, and immediately learn the answer is not too long at all).

Gemma isn't exactly the parenting type. Who can blame her, though, when she has a job designing toys and gadgets that serve as enough of a distraction for kids that their parents don't have to be constantly parenting? Her most recent invention is a robotic pet that talks—mostly in annoyingly literal one-liners—and can be fed digital food until it expels pellets from its backside. That, in an indirect way, the robot's farting, its joking, and the girl's attachment to it kind of contribute to the deaths of Cady's parents is a fact worthy of at least a little note.

Anyway, Gemma has bigger plans and larger ambitions with her new creation: a living doll, officially called the Model 3 Generative Android, that can pair with a child, offer a boy or a girl a bunch of games and activities to play and do, and learn how to communicate with said kid in a very direct, specific, and personal way. M3GAN (played by child actor Amie Donald, as well as an eerie animatronic face, and voiced by Jenna Davis) becomes something of a perfect parent to the confused, lonely, and grieving Cady.

That allows Gemma, who struggles even to read a bedtime story to her niece (With no books around, she relies a phone app, which requires an update), to keep working on getting more M3GANs out on the market. Otherwise, she'd be bothered by having to repeat over and over again that Cady needs to flush the toilet and wash her hands after using the bathroom. Instead, the robot can handle that busywork of teaching and raising a kid. The whole thing is an insidious but very modern cycle of avoiding and passing off responsibility, although Williams' performance makes the character awkwardly charming and sympathetic in her relative ineptitude.

The real meat of the story and the humor, though, is in M3GAN's transformation into a killing machine. This shouldn't be funny, but it is, because Cooper and Johnstone do the work of establishing this off-kilter tone, the underlying jabs at our increasing reliance on technology, and just how intrinsically creepy M3GAN is.

Most of that is pretty straightforward, of course, although the more satirical elements don't need to be here but are worthy of appreciation. Still, the work prepares us and puts us in the mood for the more extreme turns of the plot.

One already has been suggested. The general rule of horror movies is that the likes of kids and dogs are off-limits within the carnage. While such movies have started playing with and subverting those unspoken laws more and more, there's something a bit daring in how the filmmakers here break the guidelines as soon as M3GAN becomes aware of death (leading to what almost and amusingly looks like an existential crisis for the android). M3GAN comes to realize it's the ultimate way of protecting Cady—and, as the robot becomes more autonomous, itself—from threats.

The first obvious threat is the neighbor's dog, which bites Cady as the girl tries to save her robot from the canine's vicious teeth. The second is a particularly nasty bully at a camp-like school where Gemma thinks Cady could learn to socialize with actual kids—not the robot that the aunt/inventor is starting to believe is becoming a problem. This bully is a really bad customer—hurting other kids, abducting M3GAN, looking as if he's about to do something especially terrible toward it. He has to be this despicable a character, or otherwise, we'd be incredibly unsettled by what follows, instead of understanding and appreciating that detective's laughter about the matter.

As for the rest of the story, it's completely routine, which is to be expected but isn't necessarily a detriment. M3GAN finds more and more potential threats, comes up with more and more justifications for killing them, and dispatches those people with a level of ruthlessness that's also to be expected and a degree of sassy, self-aware humor that helps to moderate the violence (which is brutal, although not especially bloody or gory—a fact that's a benefit for the comedy). More importantly, the success of the comedic elements assuages the feeling that we've seen all of this in some shape or fashion before.

In other words, there's nothing particularly special or unique about the story of M3GAN. If everything falls into a familiar pattern along the way, at least the filmmakers ensure that becomes irrelevant as the film finds its broadly satirical and dementedly humorous footing.

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