Recently it’s felt like a lot of movies don’t know how to have fun anymore, they’re either too serious or take on a self-aware tone when dealing with any dramatic or over the top elements. M3GAN, directed by Gerard Johnstone, is a step forward towards creating films that can be over the top and crazy. Yet, these films totally embrace that and don’t feel the need to make it more than it is, they’re okay with it just being a silly movie. A summation of the plot reveals how absurd this film really is. M3GAN tells the story of an orphaned child named Cady (Violet McGraw) who becomes attached to a new type of doll which her adoptive Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) gifts her, M3GAN. She is a robot that can perfectly fill the place of a human friend. Things go awry though when M3GAN goes too far in her defensive and caring nature of Cady and people get hurt.
A lot of the marketing for this film made it seem like a horror movie, yet that’s not where the appeal lies. In terms of the fear factor, it’s pretty minimal, not something that you couldn’t show to a late elementary school age child. A large amount of appeal and draw for this movie was racked up from internet comedy laughing at some of the absurdity. A Lot of people were going into it, not with a serious attitude, but to revel in the comedic spectacle that it is. There are scenes in M3GAN that are quite memorable and will not be something you’ll soon forget due to their true absurdity. Be that ridiculous kills or out of pocket dancing and singing, some of the internet hype lives up to expectations.
A movie like this knows what it wants to do and doesn’t fill it with a lot of fluff. For this reason, things such as the cinematography or soundtrack try to be as unobtrusive as possible. This is definitely achieved as there’s next to nothing worth mentioning about these two aspects of the film. It’s shot not particularly well but also not bad, it just simply gets the job done, and the soundtrack sounds like something from every other basic movie you’ve seen. The same could be said for much of the acting. The performance from Allison Williams does just enough to get the character across but not much more. This also applies to the performances by Jen Van Epps (Tess) and Brian Jordan Alvarez (Cole). Violet McGraw’s acting was quite good though, she was incredibly believable and added depth to her character. Ronny Chieng also gave a fun performance as David. It seems a bit redundant to break down the technical aspects for this film though since at the end of the day the draw is purely to see a twisted doll kill a lot of people, and viewers aren’t going into this expecting a masterpiece.
The film was held back from being great by not leaning far enough into its crazy and humorous elements. The moments where the story really shines are when the happenings on screen were just so crazy you had to laugh. But it wasn’t able to fully let loose and just go crazy throughout the whole film, giving the viewer a glimpse of something incredible but not a full taste. If they had just gone all out and embraced the twisted and violent nature of the whole thing it would have ultimately been a more memorable and unique experience. It dipped its toes into playful absurdity but failed to completely deliver. So, in the end it leaves you wondering, will this film just be a passing fad? Or will it go down in the echelons of ridiculous horror films such as a similar movie Chucky did? As of right now it’s hard to say, but its inability to fully embrace what makes it so good may prevent it from gaining that status.
At the end of the day though this film was a blast and a fun way to kick off the new year. It represents a dying breed of film that’s unafraid to be dumb entertainment and embraces its silly nature, giving viewers a relatively mindless yet fun time in the process. Hopefully with this film’s success it’ll inspire more filmmakers to go out there and just make stupid and entertaining content that isn’t trying to be anything that it knows it’s not.
3/5 STARS