Producers: Jason Blum, James Wan and Allison Williams Director: Gerard Johnstone Screenplay: Gerard Johnstone Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Aristotle Athani, Timm Sharp, Ivanna Sakhno and Jemaine Clement Distributor: Universal
Grade: C-
In making the obligatory sequel to 2023’s surprise smash “M3GAN,” director Gerard Johnstone—who also assumes the writing duties this time around, original scripter Akela Cooper only sharing a “story by” credit—chooses an unlikely path. Rather than following the lead of the lamentable “Chucky” franchise by having the titular (and snarky) doll-turned-killer continue its murderous ways at the center of a reliable slasher franchise, Johnstone goes in another direction, turning M3GAN into something akin to an action heroine in a comic thriller pitting her against an even more advanced version of herself.
While one can admire the decision to eschew the obvious, the result is unfortunately a disappointment. The initial “M3GAN” had a pretty sharp satirical edge, as well as some genuinely creepy horror elements, for its first two acts, but stumbled into generic mayhem in the final lap. By contrast this follow-up starts with a dull, unfunny spoof of espionage conventions and never really recovers, though there are some amusing moments along the way to an expectedly overdone finale. It’s an update that proves inferior to the original, intended either as a cautionary tale about the dangers of AI or as a spoof of the genre of cautionary tales about AI, which is already dangerously crowded. It’s hard to say which.
The movie begins not with M3GAN, the doll programmed to serve as the best friend to, and protector of, the child with whom the AI-controlled toy is partnered; she’s been destroyed, at least physically, after becoming entirely too devoted to defending Cady (Violet McGraw), the orphaned niece of the device’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams) from threats real and imagined. Instead we’re introduced to AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno, spruced up in CGI), the prototype of the more advanced version of M3GAN developed by the US DOD using Gemma’s design, on her first mission. But instead of saving a kidnapped scientist from his terrorist captors, she goes rogue and kills him, much to the distress of her supposed controller Colonel Sattler (Tim Sharp, whose mugging is grating rather than amusing).
That will prod Sattler to rather violently approach Gemma for her insights. But she’s a different person; though her relationship with Cady, now a rebellious teen, remains fraught, she’s become a crusader against unleashed AI, especially when it comes to its possible negative impact on youngsters. Indeed, she’s joined a group headed by smooth-talking Christian (Aristotle Athani), a possible romantic partner, to promote responsible technology. Nor does she work on toy development anymore; along with her erstwhile co-workers Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps), she’s testing an exoskeleton that will endow a human user with robotic strength—while rebuffing the suggestion of sleazy tech mogul Alton Appleton (Jermaine Clement, as unfunny, in his own way, as Sharp) that it be enhanced with his brain neuro-implants.
News of the threat posed by AMELIA leads to the reemergence of M3GAN, who may be absent physically from Gemma’s home but has remained a presence there nonetheless. At first Gemma embodies her in a cute little plastic android M3GAN compares to a Teletubby, but soon the voice provided by Jenna Davis is reunited with the form familiar from the first film (Amie Donald, with even smoother CGI) to track down and eliminate AMELIA. As to what the latter is after, it has to do, somehow, with a conspiratorial group headed by the real villain of the piece (whose identity won’t be revealed here though it will be obvious to anyone but Gemma quite early on) and with a robot dating from the 1980s that has been imprisoned for decades because of its potentially devastating power.
There are episodes in the movie that fans of the original will react to with glee—a dance that M3GAN performs at an AI convention, a completely bonkers sequence in which M3GAN comforts Gemma about her uncertain parenting skill by singing her a song viewers will be expected to know. That joke goes on too long, but so do the bouts of battle between M3GAN and AMELIA, which result in our heroine’s being torn to shreds more often than one cares to count. Much else becomes tiresome as the film drags on to a full two hours, with M3GAN’s one-liners getting increasingly heavy-handed. The necessity of inventing bits to justify the presence of Alvarez and Van Epps, and even Cady (the girl’s skill at martial arts becomes a go-to crutch in the latter stages) merely adds to the feeling of flabbiness despite all the action.
Perhaps that bloated feel could have been alleviated has the characterizations been sharper or the performances better. Gemma, most notably, is a drab creation, and Williams’s stiffness does her no favors, while McGraw’s Cady gets short shrift here. And while together Donald and Davis give M3GAN spunk and spark, Sakhno’s blankness makes AMELIA a bore despite her physical dexterity, and Athani is practically an embodiment of tediousness. As for Alvarez and Van Epps, they work hard to enliven the little they’ have to do, to no avail.
The movie’s been given an appropriately metallic sheen in the production design of Adam Wheatley and Brendan Heffernan and Toby Oliver’s glossy cinematography, as well as in Jeriana San Juan’s costumes (especially those designed for M3GAN and AMELIA) and in the animatronics and visual effects overseen by Adrien Morot and Kathy Tseoften. But Jeff McEvoy’s editing isn’t crisp enough, and the fight scenes are often pretty murky, while Chris Bacon’s score makes little impression.
But the fundamental problem with “M3GAN 2.0” is the basic concept. It subverts expectations, but replaces them with something that’s not a satisfactory substitute, with the absence of any real horror elements a particular drawback. Call it an experiment that, like the original M3GAN or the new AMELIA, has gone awry.