Directed by: Gerard Johnstone
Written by: Gerard Johnstone
Run Time: 2 hours

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The problem with Blumhouse horror M3GAN (2022) wasn’t the film itself, but its unrestrained marketing. While it made the killer doll an overnight meme sensation and instant gay icon, it did so at the expense of the film itself. As by putting nearly all of her cut-throat kills and bitchy one-liners in the trailers – in turn widely overshared online – it meant that by the time the film came around there was little else for audiences to enjoy. With sequel M3GAN 2.0 greenlit only two weeks into the original film’s cinema run, only time would tell if it could learn from these mistakes.

Set two years after the violent events of the first film, roboticist turned advocate for AI regulation Gemma (Allison Williams) finds herself in danger once more. When AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a military-built robot made using the blueprints of M3GAN goes rogue, Gemma and her colleagues become targets as she hunts down all those involved in her creation. Running out of options, Gemma decides that the only way to ensure the safety of herself and niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is to build a new and improved version of her original creation, the titular M3GAN 2.0.

With such queer favourites as Chappell Roan’s ‘Femininomenon’ and Britney Spears’ ‘Oops!…I Did It Again’ being used in the film’s trailers, this sequel demonstrated how well it knows its audience, supposedly promising to lean into all things camp, just as it ought to. However, in yet another marketing mishap, this promotion sells an entirely different, far more fierce film, than the flop of a final product that it actually presents.

Having already established the character in the previous film, this sequel should really have hit the ground running, but instead it decides to keep its deadly doll boxed up for much of its first half. Yes, bizarrely M3GAN doesn’t properly make her entrance until around the halfway mark, and unfortunately the film’s human cast aren’t anywhere near as interesting or entertaining enough to sustain audience attention until then.

So instead of M3GAN’s killer dance moves and catty comebacks the characters find themselves stuck debating the merits and dangers of using AI in modern tech. It’s an unforgivably dull angle to approach the film from, after all with AI now implemented in the real world it’s not as an intriguing topic to discuss on screen. It’s already talked about exhaustively online, so while objectively the film succeeds at being relevant, it just doesn’t have the same appeal that older titles centred around the same subject once had. As with the discourse already feeling inescapable, the last thing audiences need is a trashy horror-turned-action trying to offer any kind of sincere commentary on it too.

This choice to shift from horror to action is also a misplaced one, instantly removing the potential for silly scares and general camp. There should at least be some exciting action to appreciate then? Apparently not, as this is offered up only sparingly across the film’s bloated two hour runtime. Most of which is devoted to delivering laborious exposition about plot points that viewers won’t care for. When the action finally arrives it’s completely unremarkable and soundtracked by a generic score that could be lifted from any of a number of forgettable MCU entries. Where are the pop girly needle drops, where are the post-kill dance breaks, hell, where’s the fun!?

As despite the aesthetic upgrade, M3GAN 2.0 forgets what made its main attraction such a star in the first place. Favouring tiresome familial drama and tedious tech debates over the fierce and flamboyant features of its fabulous fembot, this intended glow up ends up botched beyond repair.

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Star Rating: ★ 

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