Blumhouse and James Wan are two of the best and most prolific horror entities around, and their impending deal is a win for horror genre fans. Looking over the last 15 years or so, the two have basically had a monopoly on the genre, if you don’t count A24’s recent run.
For their first collaboration, Wan and Blumhouse has brought us M3GAN. M3GAN, short for Model 3 Generative Android, is the story of a toy company engineer (played by Get Out’s Allison Williams) who develops a lifelike doll prototype and gifts it to her niece (played by Violet McGraw) to be her greatest companion. However, that gift soon reveals a side that could have deadly consequences.
Given the premise, it’s easy for M3GAN to evoke thoughts of an update to similar movies. Annabelle 2.0 Puppet Master for this generation. Maybe Child’s Play on whatever regimen that ages Lebron James backward and keeps him playing at an elite level in year 20 while the rest of his draft class is either commentating, coaching, or chilling.
While all of those are sensible assumptions, they are also all wrong. M3GAN equals her wayward or possessed doll kin in wreaking havoc, but her movie is entirely different as a sum of its parts…and it’s an absolute blast.
In M3GAN, Wan continues what appears to be an evolution away from his usual, more traditional brand of horror. It’s similar to his previous release, Malignant, in which you see his top-notch jump scares and gore amid a story that has room to be so disordered that the film openly mocks its own absurdity at times. Wan tweaks that formula a bit for M3GAN, as it isn’t as ridiculous as Malignant, but there’s still something special here.
The driving force behind what makes that style work for M3GAN is the script. Written by Malignant scribe Akela Cooper, it takes a well-worn “evil doll” plot and makes it into something intelligent and relevant. The key to pulling that off is the humor and social commentary centered around our overreliance on technology that Cooper puts into the story.
Cooper uses M3GAN’s human characters and their flaws to skillfully illustrate how we have changed everything from parenting and relationships to the purpose of a toy to what play means for the worst based on technology. It makes for some good comedy and an uncommon depth in a film not made by Jordan Peele, yet it hits without being too wacky and too much of a think-piece.
Director Gerard Johnstone also made a few moves that made M3GAN work, starting with leaning into how bizarre this film could be. The choice to use a person as M3GAN instead of some type of animatronics or a large amount of digital effects allowed the doll to appear more human than toy, which made her creepier. Also, Johnstone appears to have taken a page from Wan’s book and used sound to stir up scares.
On the acting side, all the praise goes to Amie Donald, the young lady responsible for M3GAN’s movements. The infamous viral dance scene is the most anticipated scene, but Donald does some fantastic stuff in terms of her body language and mannerisms that make the M3GAN character creepy, funny, and memorable beyond her body rolls.
M3GAN isn’t the usual Wan scare-fest, but thanks to Cooper’s slyly crafted script, it didn’t have to be. As more of a cautionary tale than scary movie, M3GAN uses humor and a dose of reality to bring forth a story that entertains as much as it warns about the dangers of replacing humans with technology. She won’t frighten you like Chucky or the other murderous dolls before her, but M3GAN makes it clear that the newest addition to killer toys will quickly have a place in the hearts of horror lovers.
Comentarios