M3ghan (2022)

 

M3ghan (2022)

Director: Gerard Johnstone

Stars: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis (voice)

Short Review, no spoilers

When M3ghan first came out at cinemas, it seemed to be sold as a straight-up horror movie in the sense of both another entry in the creepy doll genre and also the latest model from production company Blumhouse. However, it is actually a refreshingly dark and clever satire made with the kind of smart restraint that will frustrate anyone demanding only ‘how many killins’ and ’ooh how it made me jump’ thrills when the real chill factor is how insidiously and seductively the promotion of technology seems to promise the solution to all of our age-old human life problems.

Full Review (spoilers)

The opening scene of M3gan was perhaps the most horrifying for me when I first saw it at my local movie house. Thinking it was yet another bloody tacky advert after the millions I’d already watched, I was soothed and amused when I realised it was a satirical start to what is a very clever and critical film. Beginning with a cheesy and hilarious commercial much like Westworld - another robot-gone-wrong movie – here we are introduced to the competitive arena of toy-dom. There on in the threat of AI and its hurried, irresponsible use to make profit is again explored but here with the added complexities of modern era child-raising.

Thus, from the beginning, we are met with bolt after bolt of sometimes very darkly funny stabs at our increasing dependence on technology and how it seems to have overridden common sense in various scenarios. Even the tragic car accident that kills eight-year-old Cady’s parents at the beginning culminates after a conversation that reveals them to be typically modern, middle class and non-real world existing parents, believing that absence of an electronic device will cause their child to go postal, and reliance on a car that looks like a four-wheel drive will be enough to get them through a dangerous mountain drive through a blizzard.

Even more clueless is Cady’s aunt Gemma, who inherits her niece after the deaths of Cady’s parents. The film frankly depicts Gemma’s ineptitude as a guardian - despite being a toy designer, she barely knows how to communicate with a little girl, even her own niece. In another swipe at the inadequacy of technology as replacement for everything, Gemma has to wait for a bedtime story to download on her smartphone because she doesn’t have any books, but the film also refreshingly brings us an authentic depiction of a woman who is not at all maternal (yes, they do exist). What Gemma and Cady do end up bonding over is Cady’s own drawing efforts and interest in Gemma’s old college project, a robot called Bruce. This in turn inspires Gemma to abandon a less interesting deadline and nail down a prototype she is more passionate about. She works solidly on the life-size doll-robot to produce M3gan, in what she hopes to be a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone effort at driving through an ambitious project at work and also appease her bereaved niece.

M3gan is an instant hit, both with Cady and with Gemma’s boss. Even a sticky moment when Cady breaks down in tears during a display for the board is overcome in style. M3gan turns it around when she successfully consoles Cady and rescues the presentation, proving her/it-self to be even more valuable than anyone expected and sealing the bond even more with Cady.

If a toy being used as replacement for parenting was dubious enough, M3gan goes above and beyond, showing that she is able to do more than any parent. Herein lies a pertinent quandary facing all those responsible for children right now, as the temptation to allow them to learn everything they need to know via the internet can be all too easily given in to. M3gan is inextricably linked to the seductive but impersonal possibilities of the internet – she needs to know everything, always be one step ahead, and, like an algorithm, be constantly adapting to changing human interests. She proves to be hard to keep up with, performing one function one moment before switching to an entirely different one the next in a way that would be deemed psychopathic in a human.

But so goes what would seem to be a perfect arrangement, with Gemma unburdened of caring for her ward, and Cady seemingly flourishing with a new best friend. Linda Hamilton’s observations on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s android in Terminator 2 are called to mind, when she sees her son fall in love with the most reliable father figure a child could have. M3gan takes this role about 50 times further, providing Cady with a companion and tutor as well as a protector. The latter is where things get dangerous, as any harm visited upon Cady creates a major grudge in her new pal’s hard drive. The neighbour’s dog bites Cady so that’s the end of him. But when a hate-filled bully boy gets heavy with Cady at some dastardly open day for an alternative school, things get human-murderous.

Like all of the characters in the film, the over-indulged, violent misogynist in the making that is the bully boy is very well written. If you have been unfortunate enough to have encountered such a type, it will ring some very resonant bells. Left partnered and alone with the boy in the woods, Cady is soon exposed to his rough treatment until M3gan shows up and his attention is diverted. Turning his less than delicate touch on to the doll and lifting up her skirts, naturally he gets way more than he bargained for. The filmmakers don’t mind indulging us in some neatly dark retaliation, as M3gan displays some of her most deliciously deranged moves. From ominous stillness in the cold, misty light of the forest, she takes to all fours and gallops like a rabid animal, a similarly grotesque distortion of a sweet little girl in shades of Regan in The Exorcist.

As with Yul Brynner’s monstrous robot in Westworld, the film creators of M3gan understand the disturbing physicality of a fantasy object made odd by sophisticated physicality that is still visibly unnatural. M3gan is cute in theory but, as with the robots in Westworld, it’s the eyes that first give it away. As expertly as she has been designed, the creators still haven’t got past the dead glass eyes that even the most beloved dolls always have. In true uncanny fashion, M3gan is repeatedly viewed as acceptable and harmless from a distance but unnerving close up. And even when M3gan isn’t behaving badly but doing what she’s supposed to, she can be hilariously weird in a way that only children and fans of modern music will accept, as demonstrated when she comforts Cady with her saccharine rendition of popular song ‘Titanium’. Her perversity is explored to its fullest though when she dances provocatively like a child beauty pageant contestant in front of Gemma’s boss, before slaughtering him mercilessly with a paper cutter (this as well as M3gan’s physicality throughout the film are owed entirely to the exquisite choreography and smart dexterity of Amie Donald, cast to enact the body of M3gan).

Aside from all the fun though, M3gan has significant things to say about the dehumanising aspects of over reliance on technology. Even before she realises how dangerous M3gan is, Gemma recognises that the doll is not helping Cady deal with grief as she had hoped it would. Feeling better is important, but what M3gan and other forms of reality escaping would seem to advocate is an intolerance of suffering at all. In not dealing with the unfortunate essentialism of suffering, Cady finds herself struggling to relate to other human beings. It is also Cady’s prevention from confronting grief that feeds M3gan’s unwieldy impulses, as after all, M3gan is a reactive product that is fuelled by technologically bonding with a child, and said child hasn’t had the chance to develop a mature conception of psychological pain. So it goes, neither does M3gan …

Ultimately and even after the happy ending when all has been taken care of, the film ends with a pointed shot of Gemma’s virtual assistant voice service (something that a lot of people already use in the real world that begins with ‘A’ to give you a clue) as if to warn that we are already on the journey to such disastrous events if we’re not careful …