M3GAN the birth of a new horror icon.

M3GAN was definitely a pretty solid way to kick off 2023, even before the film was released there was people already talking about it (very strong marketing) luckily the film itself is quite great, which is due to a lot of factors. 

For starters the acting is actually really strong here, for a film about a robotic doll the acting hits quite hard in a lot of areas, Alison Williams does a really solid job as the lead, Violet McGraw once again shows she’s a very exciting new talent and seriously hits it out of the park with a lot of the mother and daughter moments. Jenna Davis who voices M3GAN you may not recognize, mainly due to her being more of a influencer (kind of) she went viral for the penny nickel dime video that came out years ago back when Jenna Davis was a child. The now 18 year old actress does a shockingly fantastic job voicing M3GAN, she’s intimidating yet humorous there’s this nice balance between the two that makes M3GAN herself such a fun character and really captures what makes such a fun horror movie villain. Horror villains like Chucky and Freddy have this humor to them but also stay on task and are serious when they need to be, the exact same can be said for M3GAN. 

The writing from Akela Cooper (who wrote Malignant) pushes this even further, perhaps what makes M3GAN stand out the most is the balance of being campy and wanting to say something about it’s themes. The film does indeed talk about technology and parenting which the film does a pretty good job of avoiding the obvious “technology bad” element that a lot of movies tend to do, it actually connects the two themes of parenting and technology quite well even if it isn’t the most profound discussion in the world the movie does make it work. Then there’s the campiness that is just truly fun, M3GAN is a film that knows what it exactly wants to be and isn’t afraid to embrace it especially during the last half of the film. It’s something that a lot of other films really tend to forget, if you have a bizarre premise with a lot of hysterical moments such as M3GAN singing Titanium by David Guetta and Sia, or M3GAN doing random dances that look like they came from Tiktok why not go all out? Finally the film itself is actually quite hilarious and just an overall fun time, the moments I mentioned before are only two of what makes the film hilarious there’s plenty of other moments here that truly shine and give the film character. 

Overall M3GAN is an incredible solid way of kicking off 2023, while it did have to hold back on the kills due to the PG-13 rating (although I believe that they are going to release the R rated cut when it goes on VOD) that doesn’t hurt the movie that much. It’s still a hilarious movie with strong writing and a horror movie villain that will most definitely become an icon. 

M3GAN is currently playing in theaters. 

8/10 B+