Where I Watched It: Peacock

English Audio Description?: Yes

So M3gan is like Childs Play on crack. Not only does it embrace the fact that it is no longer in the 80’s, and AI technology has come a long way, but it’s much more self aware. That means they know you show up to a killer doll movie not really because it’s scary. Unless you go the Annabelle route, where the doll brings some kind of demonic force with it, these dolls come to life are kinda silly.

And for parts of this film, M3gan is silly. There are very clearly some choices made that can get a good chuckle. Then again, it also knows it is a horror movie… but a PG-13 one. When I went to watch this on Peacock, it wasn’t advertised as Unrated, and now it is. Maybe I saw the unrated version, but if so, it’s basically a soft R. I am a little surprised that what I saw was PG-13, but we have always been far more lax with violence over sex and profanity, of which this film has almost none.

Violet McGraw, the younger sister of Madeline McGraw from The Black Phone, anchors this film as the girl who is given the first M3gan after her parents die in a car accident, and her aunt is left to care for her. Allison Williams is one of those characters that’s pretty sure she’s in a straight forward horror movie. Her boss… not so much. obnoxious as hell, and the kind of character begging to be killed in a horror movie. Actually, the same can be said of a couple other kills. not all, but M3gan really does do quite a public service.

The doll is played by an actual actress, and this is where the audio description failed me. I really truly did not feel like i understood what m3gan looked like as well as I should have. i don’t have a great grasp of her in my head, or even things like size relativity. How much shorter than Violet McGraw’s character is she? I have no idea.

I know a lot of people found this movie hilarious and a blast, but it tended to want to have its cake and eat it too. I thought the tone shifts were frequent, and it was hard to tell if the writer thought we would think that was funny or not. Not everything was a laugh factory, and in some regards M3gan is trying to be taken a lot more seriously than Chucky at times.

I know they’ll make a sequel. Please, lean into the comedy a lot more. Snakes On A Plane isn’t a great film, but it knew what it was, and it played that genre from beginning to end. M3gan needs to stop trying to be taken at all seriously and just have fun, like that crazy dancing everyone keeps talking about. More of that please.

Final Grade: B-