M3GAN [2023]

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Someone to watch over me … from L, Cady (Violet McGraw), M3gan (voiced by Jenna Davis) and Gemma (Allison Williams) in M3gan. Then when Gemma unexpectedly gains custody of her niece, Cady, she decides to use a prototype of M3GAN to help with new parenting duties.

Blumhouse Productions has been a major force in the horror genre since 2007's Paranormal Activity became a worldwide sensation. Gemma suddenly becomes the caretaker of her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) after a tragic accident kills her parents. And Gemma doesn’t have anyone to fill that post – until her nine-year-old niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is orphaned after a car crash and comes to live with Gemma, who must furthermore honour her late parents’ wish that she is homeschooled.At first, MEGAN is a huge success, bonding with Cady and doing exactly what Gemma set out for it to do. Derivative though M3gan undoubtedly is – with creepy fake toy TV ads that are a ripoff-homage to Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop, and a freakout finale that references James Cameron’s android meisterwerk – there are some adroit satirical touches about dolls as toxic aspirational templates, dolls as parodies of intimacy and sensitivity and tech itself as sinister child-pacification, with kids given iPads the way Victorian children were given alcoholic gripe water. It is funny when M3gan sings Titanium to Cady as a lullaby, but is then capable of switching to snarling rage, and Chieng is good value.

M3GAN is currently playing in theaters and available to rent/purchase (without the special features) on VOD platforms like Vudu. Not a robot so much as a hi-tech Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together with bits of Robocop and Terminator, but cheekily enjoyable just the same. The film tells the story of a creepy doll who goes rogue after coming into the possession of an eight-year-old girl, and if box office figures in the US are anything to go by, it looks like Wan and Blum have another hit on their hands. Unfortunately, things start to go horribly wrong as the AI programming of M3GAN turns out to have a "killer instinct. M3GAN has other weird quirks as well, such as a love of dancing and a constant desire to cause trouble which often turns violent.To be properly developed, M3gan needs to “pair” with a little girl owner; she needs to sync up with an actual human, to learn her owner’s speech patterns, behavioural traits and emotional needs, so she can be properly close with her. The film ultimately went through a number of reshoots to nab a PG-13 rating for its theatrical rollout, but director Gerard Johnstone felt that the sinister implication of violence (as opposed to showing it outright) made the thing much scarier as a result. M3GAN, orModel 3 Generative Android, is an artificially intelligent lifelike doll developed by Gemma. Slight futuristic advancements in plot points and cgi can only differentiate from the old so much when something feels so familiar.

It's not yet clear when the film will get a physical release, but it's unlikely to be until at least a couple of months after its January cinema debut. Using a similar movie from the same distribution company, Universal, there are ways to predict when physical copies could become available for purchase. As is only fitting for a horror film, it receives a wide release in the UK on Friday 13th January – one week after it arrived in cinemas across the Atlantic. Making it PG-13 was something that happened after the fact, but it was always so close to PG-13, anyway. The android was designed to be a child’s best friend and loyal companion, especially when caretakers like Gemma need help.I even remember thinking early on, 'This could be PG-13, and some of my favorite films like Drag Me to Hell are PG-13. After a profitable theatrical run, the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD almost two months later onDec.