The first M3gan film simply put – was feminist riff off of Child’s Play, that swapped voodoo for the burgeoning fears of AI. That film also struck virial gold thanks to a clip in the trailer that had the doll doing what appeared to be a emote/tiktok dance that the studio then smartly used for marketing to capitalize on the trends at the time. This contributed to one of those proverbial cinematic lightning in a bottle moments that took the 7 million homage and catapulted it into the pop-culture stratosphere landing with a 180 million dollar box office. Now the only problem with that, is after that kind of success in the horror genre you HAVE to make a sequel and that hits theaters this week, in an approach that pleasantly surprised me with both its heart and relevancy.
M3gan 2.0 takes place two years after the events of the first film, with Gemma (Allison Williams) having parlayed the tragedy of the previous film into being an author and an advocate for regulation of artificial intelligence. The film also draws the logical conclusion that M3gan’s abandoned tech is poached and weaponized by the US government to craft the perfect assassin Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno); only to have it much like its predecessor rise up and start a murder spree. This time the target appears to be anyone who worked on the M3gan project and theoretically could stop her. This impending danger has M3gan’s consciousness coming out of hiding, to help protect Cady (Violet McGraw) and by proxy Gemma.
Horror sequels are notoriously a hard nut to crack, because you’re trying to replicate that spark that made the first film what it was and resonated with so many fans. M3GAN 2.0 smartly decides that this answer isn’t simply more of the killer doll, which is usually the answer, but digging more into the mother/daughter like relationship of Gemma and Cady, who is now a terrible teen and against her best wishes wants to follow in her technological footsteps. This thread interestingly enough grounds the narrative as returning director and now writer Gerard Johnstone peppers the human story with a hyper relevant thread of the dangers of unregulated artificial intelligence, that is actually playing out now as we speak. As someone who follows the current state of AI, M3gan 2.0 thankfully does so while keeping things very much in the realm of reality, as much as a film about a wise cracking killing robo-nanny can.
Also I have to applaud Blumhouse for bringing EVERYONE back from the original, INCLUDING the young Amie Donald who has become a horror-con favorite thanks to her appearances where she’s often seen doing M3gan’s infamous viral dance from the first film. As a die-hard horror fan, I KNOW it’s is not just the mask that makes the character, but the actors like Kane Hodder and Nick Castle behind it. I was very happy Blumhouse understood that, which is no doubt what caused the doll to ask to be taller.
M3gan as a character also has an interesting trajectory, since this adventure has her faced with a choice — joining forces with either the killer robots or helping the meat sacks and protecting Cady. It’s how this plays out that drives the real drama of the piece, because she’s not simply let off the hook from the previous film by Gemma after killing four people. It’s given some real weight and because of that there’s consequences, which manifests in an intriguing growth for M3gan from the first movie, that was completely unexpected. M3gan isn’t the only one changed by the first film, our two other female leads are thankfully now survivors rather than victims and have much more agency this time around. The film manages ALL OF THIS while still giving M3gan her catty one-liners (Sadly most are in the trailer), another musical moment that was hilarious and a yet another reason to dance, this time for an audience.
M3gan 2.0 cements this as yet another franchise for the horror studio, and does so by smartly subverting narrative expectations and allowing all of our characters some real room to grow. The film does trade its creepy horror origin for more of an apocalyptic sci-fi spin, while keeping the pitch black humor and the body count fans would expect. It’s less a killer doll movie and more a foray into something much more relevant and reality based, which if you ask me is even more terrifying. This change also allows M3gan to actually evolve from an antagonist into more of an antihero, which offers up the kind of character development rarely seen in the horror genre. It’s usually swap locations, kill inhabitants, rinse and repeat. That said, given these big swings , I am not sure HOW they will follow this up, but I am definitely in the bag for whatever they do next.
