
A frightening doll is popular in Hollywood. Consider Chucky from the film Child’s Play or Annabelle from the Conjuring series.
M3GAN, which stands for Model 3 Generative Android, can now be added. She’s the result of years of work by Gemma (Girls and Get Out actor Allison Williams), a smarty-pants inventor at top toy business Funki, which has already flooded the market with Purrpetual Petz, a variety of furry toys that you can feed via an app until they poo themselves. Nice.
To be honest, M3GAN is a little more refined. She can couple with her primary user and learn about them as well as her surroundings. She can even sing and dance (including a spectacular rendition of David Guetta and Sia‘s Titanium). Gemma, who is still in the prototype stage, must persuade her employers to take her work farther.
Cady (Violet McGraw), her niece, has come to live with her by coincidence after her parents were killed in a horrible accident. She needs a companion, Gemma needs a test subject… You can probably guess where this is headed.
Things start to go wrong, especially when M3GAN goes to extremes to protect Cady. But don’t worry: despite being co-written by James Wan (the man behind the gruesome Saw films), M3GAN isn’t terribly gory. This could explain why the film has recently given Avatar a run for its money at the US box office – it’s a film that even those who are afraid of horror can enjoy.
It may not be on the list of “scariest movies ever,” but it is immensely entertaining – hilarious, weird, and shocking.
It also causes you to think about technology and our reliance on it. After this, parents might think twice about putting an iPad in front of their children in the car.
M3GAN, as skillfully portrayed by Jenna Davis, can stand shoulder to shoulder with Chucky, Annabelle, and the rest. Doll-icious.
In cinemas now.