Weekend Watch - M3GAN
M3GAN’s ability to embrace its blend of horror, childishness, and fresh takes helps it overcome quite a bit of its shortcomings in the horror department.
Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Blumhouse’s latest horror cult classic in the making, M3GAN. The film released last weekend to surprisingly great reviews (a 72 Metacritic score and 95% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) considering its genre, marketing, and the month of January. The film about an A.I. doll that gains increasing levels of sentience, leading to drastic actions in pursuit of its prime directive of protecting the child Cady, stars Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, and Amie Donald and is now showing in theaters. Let’s get into it.
Letter Grade: B; it’s definitely not “good” but by embracing its ridiculousness it triumphs, nonetheless.
Should you Watch This Film? Absolutely! It’s a great time, a welcome escape for a quick hour and forty-two minutes with enough heart and story to keep everyone entertained; though you can probably wait for this to hit streaming if you’d rather.
Why?
Move over, Child’s Play, we’ve got a new scary doll movie that might just be about to make some franchise waves. M3GAN lets you know from the jump exactly what kind of experience this is about to be – irreverent, on-the-nose, and surprisingly tame in terms of its violence. This film has no desire to be in the same club as Get Out or Hereditary or even writer James Wan’s The Conjuring and does a phenomenal job carving out its own niche among the more under-the-radar horror comedies like Happy Death Day or The Cabin in the Woods. In this case, M3GAN’s niche happens to be that of toy horror and its modern evolution out of haunted/possessed dolls into threatening A.I. The film delivers all that you could want from a PG-13 version of this film, with a solid combination of build-up and jump scares, a touching story about family and coming to terms with loss, and so many payoffs you’d swear the writers studied under Chekhov himself.
As surprising as M3GAN’s success has been, I should also note here that the film is by no means perfect. For January, it might be the closest we’re ever going to get to a perfect wide release, but M3GAN still has its issues. For starters, its PG-13 rating keeps the elements that could have made it a great slasher at a minimum. With no major gore or physical horror to speak of, the film feels a bit muzzled in the horror department. When she finally goes on her rampage, M3GAN only actually kills two characters, neither of which felt overly impactful to the lives of the protagonists. The film’s total body count, including animals and people not killed by the robot, comes to a grand total of seven – not the most violent, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.
M3GAN makes up for some of its lack of horror with plenty of (I think intentional) comedy. My theater was laughing out loud noticeably in at least four distinct moments in the film that I can remember, and I found myself and/or my wife chuckling to ourselves in at least ten or twelve others. Ultimately, the film’s embrace of its comedic nature is what has endeared it to audiences and made it one of the most commercially successful January releases in quite some time. A doll singing Sia after it makes a kill, doing a dance as a threat to a potential victim, and running through the woods after a kid on all fours are only a few of the moments that stand out as prime examples (all of which featured in the trailer, so this avoids spoilers) of the filmmakers going full-send on their film’s wild premise. Any film that is so unapologetically itself as M3GAN is deserves recognition and appreciation, and I’m glad to offer it here.
M3GAN’s ability to embrace its blend of horror, childishness, and fresh takes helps it overcome quite a bit of its shortcomings in the horror department, launching the film on what I anticipate will be a franchise-starting path. It’s currently showing in theaters if you can’t wait to go see it. Otherwise, it’ll probably hit streaming around March, and I definitely recommend giving it a watch.