The theme of Artificial Intelligence is nothing brand new to the Horror Nation. Wes Craven touched on the subject with his cult classic Deadly Friend. More recently, the very ordinary reboot to Child’s Play incorporated the ever-evolving technology into its main plot. Kicking off horror this year comes another attempt to use Artificial Intelligence as a premise for modern horror with the release of M3GAN. With a written story from Akela Cooper and horror staple James Wan, M3GAN has the potential to become the next big icon. Will her cords sizzle the screen to stardom, or will her fuse fizzle fright fans eager dark hearts?
After the untimely death of her parents, Cady is sent to live with her aunt Gemma. Gemma, a single woman, and world class robotics expert, struggles to connect with her young niece. Desperate to come up with the next best thing in children’s toys for her overbearing boss, Gemma decides to go forward with her latest Artificial Intelligence project in hopes of both creating the ultimate play toy and help her niece come out of a stagnant depression. The results are stunning. M3GAN, the latest in Artificial toys, is next century groundbreaking. Through programmed unconditional love and protection, M3GAN and Cady become inseparable. That is until M3GAN’s self-awareness causes her to start making unethical decisions regarding her primary function of loving Cady with unbiased affection. After a series of suspicious events and M3GAN’s ever increasing disturbing behavior, Gemma takes her in for a reboot. But it is too late, as ME3GAN has now evolved to the point of self-protection. Gemma must shut down her greatest invention before M3GAN causes some severe digital damage.
The opportunity was here to create a fantastic new horror icon. That opportunity slipped away with several massive mistakes from the production team. M3GAN, by all means, is an enjoyable film. The performances are all strong. Amie Donald is terrific as M3GAN, a great performance by the 12-year-old. Fellow newcomer, Violet McGraw shows great range as Cady and Allison Williams carries the films as the lead Gemma with a perfect showing. The special effects team does a fantastic job with several set pieces that takes the audience into the world of high-tech robotics. The first signs of an issue were the early PG13 rating. Everyone can understand the film wanting to reach a larger audience, but the actual horror comes too far and in between. Akela Cooper and James Wan deliver a very ordinary script. There are some levels of secondary subtext that pop up briefly (Gemma is alerted to five Tinder updates as she comes home to her personal A.I. Device,) but the overall story is very basic. M3GAN’s slow burn decent into devious destruction is written well, but there is no big-time horror pay off to compensate for the build. This is another work where Blumhouse just misses the mark yet again, a very reoccurring and frustrating theme. The rather small budget of 12 million is shocking, given the nature of the film, however, this is the financial structure of the horror giants.
Another 5 million and a harder R rating could have given the Horror Nation a modern classic. Instead, M3GAN will be uploaded, enjoyed, and quickly, control, alt, and delated from the minds of fright fans.
Scream Score: 7.8/10