M3GAN kicks off 2023 the right way — with a refreshing reminder that dolls are still creepy, and so is artificial intelligence.
When a fatal car accident in a snowstorm leaves a young girl, Cady (Violet McGraw), an orphan, she is left with her aunt, Gemma (Allison Williams), a career-driven engineer at a toy company who lives in a sterile home in Washington state and seems to lack any maternal instinct whatsoever. When Cady arrives, Gemma is obsessed with designing a groundbreaking toy called "M3GAN."
M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) is an artificial intelligence robot with "emergent capabilities," meaning her technical abilities expand the longer she is "paired" with her human. Gemma kills two birds with one stone when she pairs Cady with M3GAN, testing out the prototype and getting free child care at the same time. But when M3GAN appears to have evil intentions in the interest of protecting Cady, things predictably take a murderous turn for the worse.
M3GAN comes at the right time, amidst a boom in AI image generators and the release of ChatGPT, a language model. The character of M3GAN speaks to our general unease surrounding new AI technologies. When questioned about what she is, M3GAN responds, "I've been asking myself that same question." Little detail is given into the way the technologies work, but the insistent focus of Gemma and her stressed out boss is to release this "toy" as soon as possible, risking not sufficiently testing the prototype.
Despite the fervent discourse surrounding this controversial topic at the moment, M3GAN avoids anything more than a surface level analysis. The film exists for silly entertainment, and it delivers. Enough one-liners land to satisfy the audience, and there are plenty of bizarre moments that make it stand out among other trope-y horror doll films. One scene even has M3GAN pausing to do a TikTok-esque dance before murdering her next victim.
Williams, who starred in Lena Dunham's Girls and Jordan Peele's Get Out and executively produced M3GAN, gives us a character who is tolerably unlikable. The audience may feel unsure whether or not they should be rooting for her, a role that seems to suit her well as an actress.
Director Gerard Johnstone offers clever shots that play up the absurdity of the doll's existence in everyday life, such as when she's brought to Cady's school and is left in the doll section, surrounded by and in stark contrast with the other children's colourful stuffed animals. One of the most well-done features of the film is that, visually, M3GAN is not immediately creepy. It's the subtle expressions and gestures she makes that indicate what she might be thinking and hint that something sinister lies beneath her flawless robot exterior.
Though there was ample opportunity for more thoughtful commentary, the film succeeds because maybe audiences don't want to think, they just want to laugh about how uncanny, threatening and possibly even murderous modern day technology might be becoming. M3GAN gives us this experience, while effectively balancing silly and creepy.
(Universal)When a fatal car accident in a snowstorm leaves a young girl, Cady (Violet McGraw), an orphan, she is left with her aunt, Gemma (Allison Williams), a career-driven engineer at a toy company who lives in a sterile home in Washington state and seems to lack any maternal instinct whatsoever. When Cady arrives, Gemma is obsessed with designing a groundbreaking toy called "M3GAN."
M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) is an artificial intelligence robot with "emergent capabilities," meaning her technical abilities expand the longer she is "paired" with her human. Gemma kills two birds with one stone when she pairs Cady with M3GAN, testing out the prototype and getting free child care at the same time. But when M3GAN appears to have evil intentions in the interest of protecting Cady, things predictably take a murderous turn for the worse.
M3GAN comes at the right time, amidst a boom in AI image generators and the release of ChatGPT, a language model. The character of M3GAN speaks to our general unease surrounding new AI technologies. When questioned about what she is, M3GAN responds, "I've been asking myself that same question." Little detail is given into the way the technologies work, but the insistent focus of Gemma and her stressed out boss is to release this "toy" as soon as possible, risking not sufficiently testing the prototype.
Despite the fervent discourse surrounding this controversial topic at the moment, M3GAN avoids anything more than a surface level analysis. The film exists for silly entertainment, and it delivers. Enough one-liners land to satisfy the audience, and there are plenty of bizarre moments that make it stand out among other trope-y horror doll films. One scene even has M3GAN pausing to do a TikTok-esque dance before murdering her next victim.
Williams, who starred in Lena Dunham's Girls and Jordan Peele's Get Out and executively produced M3GAN, gives us a character who is tolerably unlikable. The audience may feel unsure whether or not they should be rooting for her, a role that seems to suit her well as an actress.
Director Gerard Johnstone offers clever shots that play up the absurdity of the doll's existence in everyday life, such as when she's brought to Cady's school and is left in the doll section, surrounded by and in stark contrast with the other children's colourful stuffed animals. One of the most well-done features of the film is that, visually, M3GAN is not immediately creepy. It's the subtle expressions and gestures she makes that indicate what she might be thinking and hint that something sinister lies beneath her flawless robot exterior.
Though there was ample opportunity for more thoughtful commentary, the film succeeds because maybe audiences don't want to think, they just want to laugh about how uncanny, threatening and possibly even murderous modern day technology might be becoming. M3GAN gives us this experience, while effectively balancing silly and creepy.
