Zo's Reviews: M3GAN

 

M3GAN is a science fiction thriller directed by Gerard Johnstone and was written by Akela Cooper and the infamous James Wan, and is about a robotics engineer (Gemma) at a toy company who becomes the legal guardian of her niece, Cady. After Cady's parents die in a tragic accident and under intense pressure at work, Gemma decides to pair her latest invention, a life-like doll prototype named M3GAN, in an attempt to resolve Cady's problems and give Gemma more time to work on her latest inventions. As expected, bad things happen, and M3GAN begins to have a will of her own. As much of a fan of James Wan as I am, this is definitely under the umbrella of his campier works (think Dead Silence, Malignant). If you're going in to this thinking you're going to see high art, think again. This is 90 minutes of cheese and camp and, as I found out first hand, lots of creepy killer robot fun.

First off, the film is very low on substance. The performances by Allison Williams (Gemma) and Violet McGraw (Cady) are alright, but I found myself much more impressed by the physical performance of Amie Donald (M3GAN). It looks like it took a lot of work to move her body that way and I gotta give her props for that. The rest of the supporting cast were enjoyable enough, with some great comedic timing by Ronny Chieng, who was Gemma's boss David. Acting aside, the story itself is one that I very much have seen before, so nothing really that happened surprised me. Every sequence was pretty much offered up to the viewer on a plate, no twists, no muss, no fuss, and that's not always bad. Sometimes a simple film is exactly what a viewer needs.

As for how the movie looks, it's a James Wan Blumhouse film with a budget, so you have to know it looks great. The special effects for M3GAN are great. The action sequences are all done very well, but one thing that I found could've been different, if anything at all, was more gore. I know, you don't need ultra violence to make a movie great, but I felt that the kills (which I did enjoy) were a little subdued. It could've been something that may could've elevated it to all the gore-hounds out there. The sequences in the movie that really got me rolling my eyes, however, involved the infamous dance scene from the trailer, as well as a scene where M3GAN sings "Titanium" by David Guetta to Cady as a lullaby that had me completely taken out of the movie. I even remember leaning over to my wife as she was laughing extremely hard...and so was everyone else in the theater. Now, while those scenes were ridiculous as hell, I feel like in this kind of movie it fit really well with the rest of the camp.

All said, I did enjoy the movie. I thought overall the performances were okay, the way it looked was great, and I had a good laugh. It was one of those movies that if I ever caught it on TV, I'd probably need to do a double take and probably stop on that channel to watch. In the old days, it would be a cult film that you catch on late night cable. Definitely go check it out if you want something to shut down your brain that'll entertain you for an evening. It is in theaters now.

FINAL SCORE: B