Director: Gerard Johnstone
Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Jenny Davis, Amie Donald
Screenplay: Akela Cooper
102 mins. Rated PG-13 for violent content and terror, some strong language and a suggestive reference.

M3GAN’s success surprised the hell out of me. I still remember in the tail end of 2022, the trailer was everywhere, all over social media, but it’s been frequently shown that social media is not indicative of general audience enthusiasm. Then, M3GAN hit theaters, and suddenly that excitement became tangible. Even I, someone who had no real interest, found it to be a strong horror/comedy hybrid, one that earned its excitement.

When her parents are killed in a car accident, Cady (Violet McGraw, Thunderbolts*) is taken in by her toy developer aunt Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out). Gemma’s not prepared for parenting, and she’s been stressed out at work while trying to outdo her previous project, but Cady triggers an idea: a doll that’s really intuitive and able to handle the harder parts of caregiving. She’s called M3GAN (Amie Donald, with voicework from Jenny Davis), and she’s here to protect Cady, no matter who she needs to kill to do so.

M3GAN was birthed from an Atomic Monster brainstorm session, and though it could be just another killer doll movie, the hook to make a film about tech reliance and dependence through the comfort of a doll is a great idea that’s been toyed with before. Don Mancini, creator of Chucky, had also contemplated the idea of horror around the advertisement and sale of products directed to children. M3GAN shares even more with the Child’s Play remake from 2019, though M3GAN succeeds in a lot of places that the remake failed. It’s funnier, creepier, and has a clearer focus and goal to meet that feels authentic to the characters.

Gerard Johnstone takes a lot of what worked (and learned from what didn’t) from his film Housebound and the unique horror/comedy blend for M3GAN, and he understands the satire that writer Akela Cooper (The Nun II) imbued her screenplay with. I particularly liked the moment where Gemma is advertising M3GAN as handling all the toughest parts of caregiving, “so you can spend more time on the things that matter.” Smash cut to Gemma working on her laptop, Cady nowhere to be seen. I love how this film expresses the problems with allowing technology to remove the humanity from interaction, and Johnstone never allows this to be become too heavy-handed. In fact, he kind of embraces the general silliness of the situation and gets the most from it.

When M3GAN’s ad campaign started getting popular with younger audiences, the decision was made to make a few small trims in order to secure a PG-13, and I think that was a shot in the foot. Now, they did advertise that the film would get an unrated cut on home video, but that feels like shortchanging the full vision that was intended. I also discovered more was cut than what I would consider a “few small trims,” and some of that wasn’t even included in the eventual unrated cut, which opted for adding small amounts of additional blood to the finished film, but there are moments in the PG-13 cut which felt like they were intended for R and then ultimately softened. I’m all for PG-13 horror, but I don’t like when an obviously R-rated film is cut down and ultimately lessened for it.

M3GAN is a lot of fun, and while its cuts do lessen the overall impact of the horror, I think the titular killer doll has the makings of a horror icon, even if her franchise doesn’t continue past the upcoming spin-off SOULM8TE. It’s horror with a lesson that’s funny and exciting enough to make it worth checking out, with preference for the Unrated Cut.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN 2.0, click here.
• For my review of Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound, click here.