M3gan

She’s blonde, she’s immac­u­late­ly well-dressed, she’s four-feet-tall and she knows every­thing about you. M3GAN is the only friend you’ll ever need – a syn­thet­ic approx­i­ma­tion of a tween girl pro­grammed to think, feel, learn and grow. Even some­one with a rudi­men­ta­ry under­stand­ing of sci-fi lore can see it’s only a mat­ter of time before this girl­boss android turns her back on Asimov’s Three Laws of Robot­ics and goes rogue, but for toy design­er Gem­ma (Ali­son Williams) M3GAN – which stands for Mark 3 Gen­er­a­tive Android – rep­re­sents an appar­ent­ly nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion in tech­nol­o­gy, where­by par­ents can final­ly auto­mate the grunt work of rais­ing kids to a nan­ny who nev­er needs to eat, sleep, or be finan­cial­ly compensated.

Thrown into the unex­pect­ed role of care­giv­er for her young niece Cady (Vio­let McGraw) after her moth­er and father are killed in a car acci­dent, worka­holic Gem­ma strug­gles to adapt to her new­found role, par­tic­u­lar­ly as she’s hard at work per­fect­ing the design of her own robot daugh­ter. In an attempt to help Cady get over the death of her par­ents, Gem­ma intro­duces her to M3GAN, and the two quick­ly form a bond. A bond so strong, in fact, that M3GAN becomes deter­mined to make sure noth­ing will ever hurt Cady, be it a neighbour’s unruly dog or a school bully.

Writ­ten by Akela Coop­er, whose delight­ful­ly unhinged script for James Wan’s Malig­nant won her a cult fol­low­ing as a hor­ror writer to watch, M3GAN isn’t try­ing to rein­vent the wheel. Cursed toys and tech are premis­es that have occu­pied the minds of film­mak­ers for decades, and M3GAN her­self – best be described as an Amer­i­can Girl doll meets HAL 9000 – is a pol­ished, psy­chot­ic cre­ation that push­es society’s obses­sion with automa­tion to an enter­tain­ing extreme. The key chal­lenge here is pre­sent­ing these famil­iar tropes in a nov­el man­ner, and Cooper’s know­ing sense of humour and her com­mit­ted cast help bring life to the conventional.

Williams in par­tic­u­lar gives an earnest turn as the super smart but super mis­guid­ed Gem­ma, while McGraw real­ly sells Cady’s rela­tion­ship with M3GAN. A com­men­da­tion to Jen­na Davis too, who pro­vides M3GAN’s voice – she’s cat­ty, chat­ty night­mare – the kind of pre­co­cious child you dread your kid bring­ing home for a play­date. It’s a smart choice to have the cast play it straight, buck­ing the recent trend in stu­dio hor­ror towards grat­ing meta ref­er­ences and winks at the audience.

This pleas­ing­ly sim­ple approach means M3GAN’s absurd moments (and there are plen­ty of those) deliv­er free of iron­ic detach­ment, and while there’s a through­line about pro­cess­ing trau­ma and the impor­tance of build­ing rela­tion­ships with human beings, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble to enjoy the film’s enter­tain­ing set­pieces and comedic flour­ish­es with­out feel­ing like you’re sit­ting through an after­school spe­cial about bullying.

If there’s one weak­ness, it’s that the film’s third act feels a lit­tle rushed after a pro­tract­ed estab­lish­ing peri­od. Once M3gan gets going there are only a few moments of car­nage, and while they’re a lot of fun, it feels more like an appe­tis­er than a main course. This is like­ly due to cuts made in order for the film to receive a fam­i­ly-friend­ly a PG-13 cer­tifi­cate in the USA, though Coop­er has hint­ed a more extreme ver­sion could be released in the future for those of us who like our dolls a lit­tle more bloodthirsty.

Nev­er­the­less, M3GAN is a breath of fresh air in a sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket, and fur­ther evi­dence of Cooper’s promise as a hor­ror writer. A fran­chise seems all but guar­an­teed now, so this is like­ly not the last we’ve seen of the pre-teen ter­ror. In the mean­time, best get the kids a Furby.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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