M3GAN (2023)

Hey, all you parents of screen-addled kids: Stay away from M3GAN. At least, that is, stay away if you don’t want to feel horribly guilty for letting computers and smartphones raise your child. This fiendishly dark horror-comedy has a lot to say about parenting and tech addiction, but such social observations are neatly ensconced in the 4-foot frame of its titular character, a walking, talking doll who is always quick to dispense a nugget of wisdom or even warble a Taylor Swift song.

The M3GAN of the movie is the latest example of artificial intelligence and robotics created for children by the fictitious Funki corporation. As the company’s hyper-driven CEO (Ronny Chieng in a deft comic performance) tells his star engineer, Gemma (Allison Williams), Funki needs something new and exciting to ensure they’ve “knocked Hasbro right on its dick!”

Unlike, say, last year’s After Yang, which suggested a more inviting take on AI, M3GAN director Gerard Johnstone and screenwriters Akela Cooper and James Wan continue a rich cinematic tradition of skepticism about high-tech, particularly when it comes to children.

And it is easy to see why. Gemma is reluctantly thrust into the role of playing guardian to her newly orphaned 9-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), after the girl’s parents are killed in a car crash. Fresh from the trauma, Cady finds little solace in her aunt, a workaholic whose house is hardly kid-friendly despite the presence of boxed toys that Gemma says are off-limits collectibles.

The aunt also has a bit of a Dr. Frankenstein complex. Gemma has been working on a prototype doll with the unwieldy name Model 3 Generative Android, otherwise known as M3GAN (pronounced like the name “Megan”), that bonds with its child-owner and is a sort of surrogate parent/sibling. Gemma “pairs” her pet project with Cady and, in short order, the girl and her titanium-plated pal are besties.

M3GAN, played by child actor Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis, is a helluva creation. She has the vacant, dead-eyed look that has made so many dolls the stuff of nightmares (surely that’s just not me, amirite?), but you also see why Cady is so enamored of her. M3GAN is constantly teaching and seeking to improve herself, and she does so with inexhaustible patience. 

Can parenting be successfully outsourced to a machine? Anyone who has ever seen a movie or read a book knows there is a thin line between being protective and being, um, plain demented. M3GAN isn’t predisposed to passivity. When a neighbor’s dog bites Cady, the doll takes notice. And when a boy bullies Cady during a class outing, M3GAN is all ears.

M3GAN sticks close to the tropes of the genre, borrowing from a host of pictures ranging from RoboCop to The Exorcist to, of course, Child’s Play. But familiarity is part of the appeal here. While there is never any doubt about where M3GAN is headed, it is wickedly funny and handsomely crafted. Like the best purveyors of horror-comedy (think Joe Dante), the ride is stylish, smart and ghoulishly fun.