M3GAN 2.0

<<

Now Playing

>>

When 'M3GAN' was released, I gave it quite a bit of praise. It felt like everything the 'Child's Play' reboot should have been, carried a dark sense of humour, and even struck a note or two that I found original, part of which does indeed include the rarely seen female horror baddie. Face it, we could stand to have a lot more of them out there who could potentially reach "Freddy/Jason" levels. 'M3GAN' showed promise as what I could consider one of the present primary horror villains - sort of a new type of Chucky.

When first seeing the trailer for this, however, I knew I was gonna be in for something a little different than last time, as this takes notes from 'Aliens,' becoming an action movie after a horror movie; 'Terminator 2' in the sense that the baddie from last time becomes good; and, amazingly enough, 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning,' as it's practically the same plot. In other words, and I cannot stress this enough, do NOT go into this expecting some kind of levelled up killer doll movie. This is a straight-up action comedy.

As the film opens two years after the events of the first film, we learn that the US Army has managed to steal the technology that created M3GAN (Amie Donald/Jenna Davis) in order to create AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a more human-looking android designed to be an assassin, because why else would the US government want deadly tech? During a demonstration of what she can do, she immediately becomes self-aware and escapes the control of Army Colonel Sattler (Timm Sharp), who heads a secret research division of the Pentagon, specializing in new technology.

In the meantime, our former heroes, Cady (Violet McGraw) and her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) are still living together. As Cady is now studying computer science, Gemma has become an advocate for AI regulation, warning of the dangers of AI after M3GAN once terrorized them by going rogue. Before long, Gemma learns about AMELIA, and M3GAN appears out of nowhere, saved on a backup in their smart home, and offers her help to stop AMELIA (having the advantage of understanding how she works) in exchange for a body.

Gemma reluctantly agrees to the deal, but fist traps her in a much less threatening toy robot until she can prove she's trustworthy. The movie does admittedly get pretty entertaining with this when it comes to the back-and-forth between Gemma and M3GAN, as while Gemma has a hard time trusting her, M3GAN does a good job of reminding Gemma that she created her in the first place, and that her primary objective was to protect Cady at all costs. I give the film a lot of credit for that, reminding us that though its a cautionary tale about AI, it was humankind that created the AI.

As the film continues, it proves to be a fun adventure, keep the sense of humour in tact from last time, and for some, it will be an intriguing change of pace from last time. I personally find myself more in the camp of wishing there was more horror involved in the process, but I can appreciate the route they took here all the same, and I don't hate it for not delivering what I wanted. If the series continues after this, it will be a matter of waiting to see where they take it. For example, it could be a case of trying out different genres, all while keeping that dark sense of humour.

I'm going to say at this point, the film is passable for what it is, and there were some decent moments that got a laugh out of me, but I'm unsure if it will be something I'll want to come back to in the future. This may very well become another case of the first film standing alone well enough that nothing following it could compare, like 'The Matrix.' On the other hand, it could be something I wanna watch again after a character's development, like 'Black Widow' with Yulena after 'Thunderbolts.' I missed out on what I wanted, but not at all mad about it, and I think one can still have fun with this as long as they go in with the right mind-set.

3/5

---