Normally, I wouldn’t pay $19.99 to watch a movie at home. In fact, I probably haven’t spent more than a few of bucks to watch a movie in my living room since DVDs were still the way of the world. But it’s spring break and my eldest daughter is home from college and everyone wanted to watch M3GAN. So now I’m the proud owner of a digital copy of this film, unless Amazon crashes or the internet ceases to exist. Isn’t it weird owning something you can’t hold in your hand?
Anyway, before I risk showing my age, let’s talk about the film!
The whole family enjoyed it, first off. Even my youngest daughter, who is 13 and isn’t particularly interested in horror, sat through its entirety. It’s pretty hard to find a movie we can all agree upon and all enjoy.
The basic plot of M3GAN is this: A girl named Cady (weirdly spelled like that, yes) is in a car wreck in which her parents pass away. Cady’s aunt, Gemma, who is a robotic-toys engineer, takes her in. Gemma just so happens to be working on a super life-like toy robot, M3gan, which she decides would be the perfect companion for the eternally sad-faced Cady. It doesn’t take long for this robot girl to start causing problems. Mysterious deaths occur and so on.
The girl who plays M3gan (Amie Donald) is really good. The makeup and special effects they use for her character are nothing short of spectacular. She is creepy as hell, but you can still see how a modern child would become attached to her in the same way they get attached to their phones and other devices. I think it’s not an exaggeration to say nearly 100% of our enjoy of the film came from M3gan’s character. Because when I dig into the rest of the film, there’s not a whole lot else left to like.
Aside from M3gan, the main cast kinda stinks. Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady (Violet McGraw) are both wholly unlikable. Gemma is a total bitch until like the last five seconds of the film. And Cady is one step away from being that awful kid from The Babadook. I quite liked some of the supporting cast, especially Ronny Chieng as David, but that hardly makes up for your two main protagonists sucking.
Also, the plot is nothing special. It’s predictable in almost every way possible. And in a trend that’s become way too fucking common, if you’ve seen the preview, you’ve seen the majority of the movie. All the parts that matter, anyway.
I don’t want to sound too negative, because we really enjoyed the film. The good parts about it are really damn good. It just could have been better had the protagonists been written in a more likable fashion, and had the plot been a little more unique and unpredictable. And M3GAN probably would have benefited from an R-rating, rather than holding back with a PG-13.
PC3’s Horror and Exploitation Movie Scale of Awesomeness!
Gore - 3 (not enough)
Special Effects - 8
Nudity/Sexuality - 0
Wow Factor - 8
Acting - 4
Fear Factor - 6
Story/Plot/Originality - 4
Cinematography/Atmosphere - 7
Sound/Music - 7
Fun Factor - 7
Not bad, not bad at all. M3GAN scores a 54 on the PHEMSA. With a little more complexity to the plot and little more likability to the main characters, it could have easily gotten over 60 points. You can get it on Amazon.
Before I saw the PC3, I panicked. I thought the damn robot started a Substack.