Director Gerard Johnstone scored a hit with his 2023 AI thriller M3GAN, so now we have the obligatory upgrade. And like most software updates, this one doesn't improve on what we already had, rather it adds unwanted features and comes with its share of glitches. It strays so far away from the simplicity of the first movie that if the series is to continue it's going to require a full system restore to an earlier saved point.
M3GAN was a campy thriller that mashed up killer kid movies like The Bad Seed, evil doll horrors like Child's Play and (especially) Dolly Dearest, and bad babysitter movies like The Nanny and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Such well-worn tropes were revitalised for the 2020s by the addition of an AI twist. M3GAN was an AI android developed by robotics genius Gemma (Alison Williams) to serve as a companion for her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), with Gemma having become the kid's guardian and substitute mom when her parents were killed in a freak accident. Of course, M3GAN, which resembled one of the girls from The Brady Bunch, began to disobey Gemma's orders, becoming possessive of Cady to a murderous degree.
Johnstone and screenwriter Akela Cooper managed to strike the right balance between horror and campy comedy, creating an instant cult favourite. The movie leaned into and embraced the tropes of its many influences, all while creating something fresh, giving us an iconic villain that wasn't based on any pre-existing IP. For their sequel, Johnstone and Cooper have decided to pull a Gremlins 2, instantly pissing away all the goodwill they had garnered with a movie that has so little in common with its predecessor it's likely to alienate its fanbase.
With Gremlins 2, Joe Dante at least showed some imagination while setting fire to his ticket to the big time. There's nothing innovative about M3GAN 2.0. While the first movie was simultaneously derivative and modern, M3GAN 2.0 is assembled from spare parts left behind by bigger budgeted franchises. With Gemma reluctantly reviving M3GAN to take down a new threat in the form of rogue military bot AMELIA, the series enters Terminator territory. M3GAN is essentially Arnie from T2 with AMELIA as the sultry droid played by Kristanna Loken in T3. More bizarrely, the franchise M3GAN 2.0 most apes is Mission: Impossible. M3GAN now becomes a pint-sized Tom Cruise with Gemma and her nerdy human companions taking the Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames roles. We get scenes of M3GAN infiltrating seemingly impenetrable fortresses and hacking into various systems while communicating with Gemma via earpiece at lavish parties.
Any resemblance to Child's Play is long gone, with this sequel leaning closer to action comedy fare than horror. The trouble is, Johnstone is trying to make a Mission: Impossible movie on a Blumhouse budget, so none of the action sequences work. At a brain and ass-numbing two hours, the film climaxes with one of those over-egged sequences that has dogged bigger budgeted Hollywood movies over the last couple of decades. The plot is simultaneously paper thin and ridiculously convoluted. But M3GAN 2.0's biggest glitch is its lack of laughs. The first movie generated comedy from playing its ludicrous scenario like a Lifetime thriller of the week, but the comedy here is strained and cloying, often based around dated pop culture references that will leave the target audience of teens scratching their heads (one scene will infuriate fans of both Kate Bush and John Hughes).
As silly as 2023's M3GAN was, it did have something to say about the dangers of embracing technology, especially when it comes to parenting. This sequel offers a contradictory stance on AI. The first movie arrived the same year as a major Hollywood strike that saw writers demand reassurance that they wouldn't be replaced by AI. In the two years since we've seen Hollywood pump out pro-AI propaganda in movies like The Creator, Companion and Atlas, and the luddite warnings of M3GAN are now replaced with a final conclusion that AI is just something we're going to have to learn to live with. To be fair to AI, it probably could have written a better script than the one that made it to the screen here.
Directed by: Gerard Johnstone
Starring: Alison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jemaine Clement, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp
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