It was in 2023, during a perfect storm of cultural obsession over both AI (ChatGPT had just launched) and plastic dolls (Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was released the same year), that M3GAN — the artificially intelligent robot doll who went on a pop-music-soundtracked killing spree — was launched on an unsuspecting-but-instantly-willing public. This Chucky-esque chick with a peculiar penchant for running on all fours and genuinely killer dance-moves became a viral sensation: a robot doll who slayed, in every sense of the word. Sensing a cultural moment, the canny producers at horror specialists Blumhouse have wasted no time in speeding to market a top-to-bottom hardware and software update, and happily, 2.0 is just as ridiculously entertaining as the prototype.
Nearly the entire creative team from the first film have returned, including writer-director Gerard Johnstone, Allison Williams as M3GAN’s regretful co-creator Gemma, Violet McGraw as Gemma’s niece Cady, and Amie Donald as M3GAN herself, with Jenna Davis providing her cutesy/curdling voice. But things are different now. While the first film at least gestured towards horror in its comedy, that pretence has now been merrily abandoned. It begins almost like a James Bond (or, indeed, Austin Powers) film, “somewhere on the Turkish/Iranian border”, with a very ’90s action-sci-fi prologue introducing us to the new tech in town. M3GAN now has a fearsome new rival in militarised fembot AMELIA (played by Ukrainian actor Ivanna Sakhno), which in the grand tradition of sci-fi acronyms stands for “Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android”: an automaton capable of punching a man’s head clean off. And wouldn’t you know it, she’s gone rogue.
We are following Terminator 2 rules here.
That’s where M3GAN — thought to have been destroyed after the deadly events of the last film — re-enters the fray, now taking multiple forms, from cloud-based AI to wearable tech to a toy “plastic Teletubby”. We are following Terminator 2 rules here: if AMELIA is the cold, ruthless, unstoppable T-1000, then M3GAN is the T-800 who can take her on — the fan-favourite baddie gone good — with Williams’ Gemma as the tech-sceptical Sarah Connor-type, who must learn to love her former foe. (Because if a M3GAN can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too?)
All of that works reasonably well, though Johnstone’s script sometimes throws a little too much plot at the wall, taking a long walk through some chewy exposition to get to the good stuff. While there’s some interesting and cogent takes on tech addiction and the unregulated power of Silicon Valley, the narrative is far more convoluted than it needs to be for a film which also has the line, “Hold onto your vaginas.” But when it lets loose and amps up the camp, we hit more 1s than 0s. There are glorious allusions to Steven Seagal’s Above The Law and Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers; a gleeful supporting turn from Jemaine Clement as a despicably sleazy tech baron; and the most deranged, batshit, out-of-nowhere musical number this side of Beetlejuice.
There are potential quibbles to be had about plausibility and coherence — Gemma’s professed Ludditism seems to be very easily swayed, if not entirely and instantly abandoned — but when you’re watching two plastic dolls neck-snap their way through the world, life is good. We can’t wait for the next system upgrade.
