M3GAN
M3GAN is a horror movie with science fiction elements about a 9-year-old named Cady, (Violet McGraw) who loses her parents in a car accident and ends up in the care of her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams), a career driven robotics engineer who works at a successful toy company. Gemma uses her newest creation, M3GAN (Amie Donald), a humanoid doll reliant on AI to not only advance her career, but also as a caregiver to Cady as a test run before it goes live to consumers. But when the attachment between Cady and Megan grows even deeper, Megan relies on violent tactics to protect Cady and their relationship at all costs.
One of the biggest problems of the film is the lack of character development. Cady is supposed to be a 9-year-old girl, but the way in which scenes are written like her needing a bedtime story or Megan suddenly singing to her in scenes are what you would expect for a six- or seven-year-old. Not a fourth grader. As a result of that her character arch and overall journey through grief got dumbed down and simplified. As a result, tension within scenes is lost. For instance, there is a scene where a therapist comes to the home to assess if Gemma is the right fit for Cady as a caregiver. The scene is supposed to end on this high note of tension with a question mark if Gemma is the right fit for Cady. But also supposed to serve an emotional vacuum for why Megan is necessary. But the scene runs very flat with the only problem is Gemma is anal retentive about letting Cady use a collectible toy. It doesn’t lend itself to build upon Cady growing more reliant on Megan either. There weren’t enough scenes for the attachment to deepen between Megan and Cady. There are moments here and there, but not enough for the whole film to hold itself to. Or even for Cady to have an emotional breakdown when Megan is taken away from her.
The film is basically running through the motions of AI going off the rails and killing a bunch of people. Then all of a sudden characters want to have these deep moments of dialogue that happen too late in the film when it should have been dispersed throughout that go into themes of what it means to be a mother, human, and what is a family, and healing from grief. If the character arches were deepened and not one dimensional. Along with having more of a balance between Megan’s arch along with flushing out Gemma’s and Cady’s there could’ve been a powerful film with deep themes.
The ending is this race to just get it done. With what felt like random elements thrown in to raise the stakes of scenes. Even the final image could have held so much weight, but is such an afterthought that it feels cheesy like the rest of the movie. If you want to see this one, I would recommend skipping through it.