M3GAN
Written by Akela Cooper
Directed by Gerard Johnstone
102 minutes, rated M
General
★★★½

There are countless creepy dolls in horror movies, but few who combine creepiness with glamour as successfully as the anti-heroine of Gerard Johnstone’s enjoyably tongue-in-cheek M3GAN, whose name stands for Model 3 Generative Android.

Played by 12-year-old dancer Amie Donald, M3GAN is a sophisticated creation in every sense – a state-of-the-art robot the size of a real tween girl, with big glassy eyes, pouty lips, and wavy strawberry-blonde hair. The look is half Victorian waif, half 1970s cover model, with a wardrobe to match – double-breasted winter coats and a signature pussycat bow in Union Jack colours.

What could possibly go wrong? M3GAN with her new bestie Cady (Violet McGraw).

Curiously, her sense of style isn’t shared by her creator Gemma (Allison Williams from Girls and Get Out, diversifying her line in uptight high achievers). A brilliant inventor, Gemma hasn’t much time for anything but her high-pressure job at the R&D arm of a toy company, even after becoming guardian of Cady (Violet McGraw), her newly orphaned niece.

You see where this is going. Unable to meet Cady’s emotional needs on her own, Gemma enlists the help of M3GAN, a pet project she’s been working on behind the back of her clueless boss (Ronny Chieng). M3GAN is designed to learn from a human owner, and Cady needs a friend to talk to: it’s a win-win, until it isn’t.

M3GAN has been brought to life by a variety of means, including puppetry and digital effects: part of her uncanniness lies in the difficulty of deciding what we’re looking at, at any moment.

Donald is presumably responsible for much of the character’s physicality, including a showstopping dance number; TikTok star Jenna Davis supplies her calming yet perky voice. But who deserves credit for the no less effective moments when M3GAN stays nearly as still as a regular doll, yet manages to say volumes with a precisely timed blink or tilt of the head?

M3GAN the film likewise appears to be a team effort. Producer James Wan, who helped devise the story, has form when it comes to creepy dolls, having brought us the highly successful Annabelle series.

The screenwriter is Akela Cooper (Malignant) but much of the humour surely comes from director Gerard Johnstone, whose one previous feature, the New Zealand horror-comedy Housebound, is a gem worth seeking out (though significantly gorier than M3GAN, which is geared to an audience that includes younger teens).

As he’ll hopefully get to show on a larger scale, Johnstone knows his craft, in terms of both genre mechanics and working with actors: Gemma’s brusque quality is pushed to the edge of caricature, but this helps make her distinctive rather than losing our sympathy.

But the tone wobbles enough to suggest the minds involved here weren’t always thinking alike. The early sequences play as relatively realistic satire in the vein of Black Mirror, banking on our knowledge that actual toys capable of open-ended conversations with their owners may not be too far from reaching the market.

Towards the climax, the switch is thrown to camp comedy, at the expense of either social commentary or full-on scares. A different kind of film might also have done more with the existential questions M3GAN starts posing as she learns about the world – and with the underlying psychological dynamics of the story, which positions its central trio as an unconventional, all-female family unit.

Still, this may be a fair tradeoff, considering the amount of memorable silliness we get instead – including the aforesaid dance routine, one of several musical moments cunningly crafted to go viral. Even if they’re not yet old enough to see the movie, many girls and boys who are into dolls are bound to love them.

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