When the trailer for the first M3GAN arrived, the killer doll instantly danced her way into the internet’s heart. The memeified riff on Child’s Play managed to strike an effective balance between horror and intentional campiness, becoming a surprise hit. A sequel was naturally greenlit, and interestingly, writer-director Gerard Johnstone decided to ditch the horror element almost entirely in favour of an action sci-fi comedy tone. Leaning fully into the camp is a good idea in theory, but ironically, it’s what makes M3GAN 2.0 a lot less fun than its predecessor.
In the four years since M3GAN’s creation and subsequent rampage, her creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has completed a jail stint and now advocates for AI regulation alongside her new boyfriend, cybersecurity expert Christian (Aristotle Athari). Meanwhile, her adoptive niece Cady (Violet McGraw) has taken up martial arts and developed an obsession with Steven Seagal. Unbeknownst to them, someone has stolen Gemma’s original design for M3GAN and created a militarized android named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno).
Sure enough, AMELIA immediately goes rogue, targeting and killing anyone involved in her creation, putting both Gemma and Cady on the hit list. As a result, Gemma is forced to ally with a still-alive M3GAN, revealed to have survived her physical destruction via a backup copy in the family’s cloud network. With a new, upgraded body, M3GAN is now in full anti-hero mode—ready to protect Cady and become the last android standing.
“Leaning fully into the camp is a good idea in theory, but ironically, it’s what makes M3GAN 2.0 a lot less fun than its predecessor.”
On paper, I should be entirely on board with this new Terminator 2-inspired premise, and there are moments where M3GAN 2.0’s genre shift works. M3GAN herself is pure sass, and Jenna Davis’s vocal performance gives a ton of life to the digital doll. Her attempts to empathize with Gemma and her crew (returning cast members Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Patten) feel both insincere and hilariously deranged—the funniest being a sudden serenade of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work to Gemma. Additionally, even though AMELIA lacks personality, Ivanna Sakhno’s portrayal provides a strong contrast to M3GAN. There are some solid action beats, and I couldn’t help but laugh during M3GAN’s wing chun training montage.
It’s the moments when M3GAN isn’t on screen where things get wonky. For instance, the character dynamic between Gemma and Cady is significantly less compelling this time around. The first film offered a poignant commentary on technology as a poor substitute for proper parenting. Both Allison Williams and Violet McGraw don’t get nearly as much compelling dialogue as before, with most of their scenes showing Gemma as a helicopter parent and Cady mostly sulking afterward.
If anything, Williams has a more compelling dynamic with M3GAN throughout the film than with McGraw. There’s a barrage of jokes every five minutes, but the majority are hit or miss—the one exception being the always-hilarious Jemaine Clement as smug tech billionaire Alton Appleton. Sadly, he doesn’t appear long enough.
“It’s the moments when M3GAN isn’t on screen where things get wonky.”
Worst of all, M3GAN 2.0 overcomplicates what should have been a simple robot-versus-robot matchup by the third act. Suddenly, there are world-threatening stakes, double-crosses and all-out shenanigans. Even the reveal of the film’s villainous mastermind feels telegraphed from two miles away, and their flat performance only drives that home. Sure, there’s a solid final fight between M3GAN and AMELIA, but it takes far too long to get to that point. There’s no reason for the film to run two hours, and ending on a bizarre pro-AI note feels completely at odds with the movie we just watched.
M3GAN 2.0 is what happens when you have too much of a good thing. Rather than maintain the balance like the first film did, the comedic elements that were initially charming now feel like they’re trying too hard. I wouldn’t say the M3GAN franchise has to shut down, but it definitely needs some more tinkering back in the lab.
