The Deadliest of Friends

Oh, M3GAN. You only wanted to be a good friend to a little girl and maybe kill a few people. How did it all go so wrong?

After the batshit crazy triumph of Malignant a couple of years ago – which may not have set the box office on fire, but became a modest viral sensation once people cottoned onto its giallo-influenced spectacle and wild, wild central conceit – I admit I was pretty excited to see what screenwriter Akela Cooper and director James Wan would do for an encore. M3GAN is it, a decent enough riff on the killer-doll and robots-run-amuck subgenres that doesn’t really do anything new with the material but doesn’t really have to; it knows what we want, and it serves it up right nice.

Written by Cooper from a story she developed with Wan, who’s here as a producer this time – the film is directed by New Zealander Gerard Johnstone, who made the very entertaining Housebound a few years back – M3GAN is the story of Cady (Violet McGraw), a little girl who survives a car crash that kills her parents, and comes to live with her distracted aunt Gemma (Allison Williams). Gemma doesn’t know the first thing about raising a child, but fortunately she’s a brilliant robotics designer for the Funki toy company whose secret project – the Model 3 Generative ANdroid – is just what Cady needs: A synthetic best friend devoted to Cady’s protection and growth.

Before you can say “hey, this is the sort of idea that almost always goes disastrously wrong”, Cady and M3GAN have become the best of friends, with M3GAN’s chipper personality and tireless support drawing Cady out of her shell and helping her process her trauma. But … well, hey, this is the sort of idea that almost always goes disastrously wrong, and you don’t ask the Malignant team to do a picture about one that doesn’t.

That’s the appeal of the film, of course: M3GAN doesn’t pretend for a second that we’re going to be surprised when things spin out of control, or even that we’re hoping they won’t. Like that recent remake of Child’s Play with Aubrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry, it’s all about winding up its pint-sized destroyer and letting it loose for our entertainment. And M3GAN underpins its wildness with just enough emotional logic to make it all work.

M3GAN is committed to Cady, all right; too committed. When the neighbor’s dog bites Cady, M3GAN deals with the dog and the neighbor. When a mean boy bothers Cady on a school trip, M3GAN has a plan for that, too. And because Gemma’s project has wowed her boss (Ronny Chieng) and the Funki board wants to put M3GANs in stores ASAP, she’s too distracted to realize her creation is well on its way to going full Skynet on anyone who looks sideways at Cady.

And so, in no time at all, M3GAN – played by child actor Amie Donald, and voiced by Jenna Davis as a sort of evil Kristen Bell – is rampaging through the halls of Funki, raining down meme-ready havoc on Gemma and her hapless dev team. It’s not novel, exactly, but again that’s the point; like Cocaine Bear, this movie really only exists to deliver on its concept. There’s no twist, no shocking reveal: It’s just a child-sized robot with its switch set to Evil.

Honestly? Fine by me. M3GAN may not be as wild as Malignant, but it understands the assignment and has a little fun with it. M3GAN herself (itself?) is a lot of fun to watch, a largely practical creation with some digital assistance from Peter Jackson’s WETA team. The film makes the most of M3GAN’s uncanny-valley presence – there’s a great moment when an unsuspecting adult sees the thing in a car and recoils in shock at its fundamental wrongness – and the performances of the human stars, especially McGraw, sell the illusion very well.

Johnstone doesn’t play the situation for comedy in quite the same way he did in Housebound, but he does find a way to make this movie’s reality just elastic enough to keep us on M3GAN’s side as she does some really awful things. Sometimes you really do just have to give people what they want.

Universal released M3GAN on Blu-ray earlier this month, including both its PG-13 theatrical cut and an unrated version that adds a little more profanity and some very enthusiastic violence; I have no doubt that the unrated cut is the filmmakers’ preferred presentation. (If you’ve ever wondered how far a human ear can stretch before it’s ripped off a child’s head, well, wonder no more.) The 1080p/24 transfer is clean and sharp, and the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack finds fun ways to underline M3GAN’s non-human presence with little hydraulic whirrs and servo noises in the corners of the sound field.

A trio of production featurettes offers about fifteen minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, with most of the focus on the development and fabrication of the M3GAN character. And yes, there will be a sequel: M3GAN 2.0 is already in development at Blumhouse. Do we need it? Probably not. But you can’t argue with success.

In Sunday’s paid edition: Criterion rolls out the latest from Ruben Östlund (in 4K!) and Steve McQueen, and the world is better for it. Don’t miss out, upgrade that subscriptiontoday!