Megan or stylized at M3GAN is a 2023 Sci-Fi/Horror/Comedy film directed Gerard Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper it stars Allison Willams as Gemma as a toy engineer who creates a state of the art A.I companion toy to accompany her niece who has recently lost her mum and dad. M3GAN seems to be a dream come true…until strange things begin to happen and maybe M3GAN is to blame.
I remember seeing the trailer for M3GAN and thinking it looked like hot garbage. It looked like a Child Play (2019) Sequel with M3GAN instead of Chucky and what we saw in the trailer looked just like a blatant cash grab on to the modern A.I trend. However, I’m not ashamed to admit I was wrong. M3GAN is actually pretty damn good.
The movie balances out comedy and horror really well and the reason it works is because it embraces the silly nature of its premise rather than trying to take itself too seriously like most silly premise horror movies in recent memory such as Countdown, Truth or Dare, or more recently, Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey, it know people aren’t going to take it seriously and goes all out with that, (the already infamous dance sequence is an example that comes to mind) and it works in the films favour. However there are aspects of the film that people should take seriously and that comes from a film making perspective. This isn’t a film with cheap jump scares like most shitty modern horror nowadays. It actually takes it time in its kill scenes to build up tension and actually deliver some pretty good scares, now nothing here is going to keep you up at night but its effective enough to keep people on the edge of their seats from time to time and the times it does try to build tension and create an atmosphere it succeeds where they try.
The film itself looks very clean, everything does look very ‘hollywood’ everything and everyone is pristine and it is kind of glaring at times, however given this is set in the modern day but with a more sci-fi element i believe this was intentional it was just a little jarring at times and gave the movie this fake aesthetic.
M3GAN the character is obviously the star of the show here, the balance of her caring nature towards Gemma’s Niece, Cady and sinister attitude to anyone who gets in the way of their friendship is great, the way she acts in both instances actually works well to the psychological horror of M3GAN when she’s gearing up it’s great to watch but when she’s being friendly its equally as unnerving because we know it’s all a facade that could drop at a push of a button (get it…she’s a computer) and it’s actually a really clever way to build tension without actually showing anything scary or unnerving.
One negative i do have towards the film is it seems to have this cutaway style edit when it comes to the kills, it’s like the filmmakers have a irrational fear of killing in a slasher movie which seems like a odd move, like don’t get me wrong i love the kills in this movie they range from funny to damn right brutal. But we don’t see them. It always seems to be a screen death and then we cut to the aftermath like a blood trail or just a dead body we never actually see M3GAN kill deliver the finishing blow on screen. This was clearly intentional as the people behind the movie said they do have an unrated and uncut gorier version releasing soon but i can’t help but think this should have been the theatrical cut to start with as the old cutaway style gets stale pretty quickly.
The Talent behind the camera isn’t something to be ignored either Gerard Johnstone who is back behind the camera for his 2nd feature after nearly 10 years since his 2014 debut Housebound (an excellent horror/comedy that I highly recommend not enough people have seen this) and Akela Cooper who wrote 2021 Malignant another excellent horror, were clearly the write people for the job as they seamlessly blend the tension of Malignant and the comedy of Housebound into their own little off spring which is M3GAN i cannot wait to see what these guys do next. With Cooper writing this year’s Nun 2 and also writing the perfectly titled M3GAN 2.0 in 2025 with Johnstone set to return to the directors chair these projects can’t come around soon enough.
Final Score
Title: Good
M3GAN, though it’s silly premise, manages to create a film that is both tense and funny without one overshadowing the other, though the camera in this one seems to be kill shy which holds it back, M3GAN has enough to keep viewers entertained because it knew exactly what it needed to be and not take itself too seriously.
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