After the first creepy dancing trailer caught the attention of Megan Thee Stallion (and to a far lesser extent, Meghan McCain), M3GAN is ready to murder its way into theaters this week. In a surprisingly welcome move, the first reviews are pretty much unanimous with praise for this latest installment in the evil children’s toy genre. Even The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw loves M3GAN, and that guy hates everything.
Based on the reviews, M3GAN appears to hit that sweet spot of campy fun and satirical commentary as it takes a scathing look at the current trend of pacifying children with technology. You can see what the critics are saying below:
Matt Donato, IGN:
M3GAN nails this American Girl meets American Psycho vibe that accentuates an automaton’s binary, soulless assessment of humankind’s follies while still finding time for memeable horror entertainment. Don’t expect perfection between flatter storytelling devices that clunkily push through familial drama or how humor overrides dolly-damndest frights, but do expect M3GAN to kickstart 2023’s genre scene with an out-of-the-box playtime villain who does it all.
Owen Gleiberman, Variety:
Movies released during the first week of January tend to share a quality of utter disposability, but “M3GAN” almost feels like it could be a cult film, the sort of thriller that generates a small but devoted following and maybe a sequel or two. You don’t have to take the movie seriously to enjoy it as a high-kitsch cautionary tale for an age when technology, especially for kids, is becoming the new companionship.
Kate Erbland, IndieWire:
There are many fun games to play during the riotously campy and delightfully self-aware killer robot horror comedy “M3GAN,” but the best is the most simple: Which one of these weirdo human suckers will this murderous android bump off first? (A much less predictable game, but just as edifying, is trying to guess when M3GAN will break into song; yes, song.) And while the final death tally might be a smidge lower than you might expect from a Blumhouse joint, this film from director Gerard Johnstone can’t help but delight its audience.
Germain Lussier, Gizmodo:
M3GAN is half an exploration of real-life horrors and half a wild murder spree starring a killer doll. Each part of the film has its own merits and important takeaways, but in the end, the world we live in is so full of its own real-life horrors, the off-the-wall escapism resonates much more.
Alyse Wax, Collider:
M3GAN herself is a marvel. Created with a combination of puppetry, animatronics, VFX, and a human actor (Amie Donald, with a voice by Jenna Davis), it’s hard to tell when she is real, when she is fake, and when she is a combination. The sound design of M3GAN certainly helps the illusion of the character. With virtually every step, M3GAN whirred and clicked, the sounds of gears moving. Not loud enough to be obnoxious, just noticeable, so that it’s clear M3GAN is a robot. Jenna Davis brings an especially joyous vocalization to M3GAN, making her sound both lighthearted and somehow ominous.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
Derivative though M3gan undoubtedly is – with creepy fake toy TV ads that are a ripoff-homage to Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop, and a freakout finale that references James Cameron’s android meisterwerk – there are some adroit satirical touches about dolls as toxic aspirational templates, dolls as parodies of intimacy and sensitivity and tech itself as sinister child-pacification, with kids given iPads the way Victorian children were given alcoholic gripe water.
Pete Hammond, Deadline:
Although it is all entirely predictable, there is some fun entertainment to be had here as the creators including director Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) and writer Akela Cooper (Malignant, The Nun 2) working from a story she devised with [James] Wan, have serviced the idea with some very funny ideas that even have the truly creepy title character dancing her way into murder, as well as singing lullabies that seem to come out of nowhere, all the better to give this less-than-original exercise some off-the-wall moments.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
A satirical tale of treacherous technology in which the shocks and scares and even the cautionary notes are not lessened by the enjoyable vein of campy humor. While comparison to the Child’s Play and Annabelle movies seems inevitable, the malevolent agents in those franchises clearly are dolls. The Model 3 Generative Android known as M3GAN, by contrast, is a sufficiently realistic humanoid to be subversive as well as creepy, echoing AI insta-classics like Ex Machina.
M3GAN opens in theaters on January 6.