M3GAN (2022)

M3GAN has obvious primary roots in the Chucky franchise and it is equally obviously intended to be a franchise of its own, but don’t hold those things against it. You didn’t even need that last shot to foreshadow the sequel. No one was going to be surprised. We all know it’s coming. What surprised—surprised me, anyway—is how entertaining M3GAN is. It’s reasonably inventive given the narrow proportions of the malevolent-doll niche. And it’s funny in ways you never expect and I wouldn’t want to give away. The M3GAN robot doll (pronounced “Megan,” of course) bears all the hallmarks of classic doll horror (e.g., E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 “Sand-Man” tale), the latest in imaginary AI robotics technology (or maybe not so imaginary, although first it appears they want to perfect those mechanical police dogs), and the intense overattachment psychology of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (by way of Brian Aldiss and Stanley Kubrick). M3GAN is a movie-movie for this era, slick and instantly and fully engaging, funny, horrific, and scary by turns. The always competent Allison Williams is Gemma, a career woman working on toy robots when her niece Cady’s parents die in an auto accident. Cady survives and becomes the ward of Gemma, who at the moment is under heavy pressure to produce a robot for market. The sophisticated doll she has been working on—M3GAN—is not going to be ready in time, but at least it’s good enough to serve as a prototyping companion for Cady while Gemma gets her act together. And that was her first mistake, etc. You know how this goes, I promise—through the usual paces of being remarkable, then dangerous, and then remarkably dangerous. Gemma is good at this stuff but eventually she loses control and from then on it’s all M3GAN. The narrative arc is familiar (or even overly familiar) but M3GAN’s specific moves and personality are not as predictable. On the other hand, full disclosure, I have never seen a single Chucky movie and it’s possible everything here has an antecedent there. I suppose that’s something I should look into? As for now, well, M3GAN ends a lot like the first Frankenstein movie. Do we dare hope there’s a Bride of M3GAN waiting in the wings?