Film Review - M3GAN 2.0
Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Two years after her viral hallway strut and homicidal lullabies, Blumhouse’s fave bratty ‘bot returns in Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN 2.0, a sequel that swaps the eerie off-kilter vibes of the original for a broader, brasher techno-thriller. The result? A film that’s intermittently thrilling, occasionally hilarious, and often frustratingly overstuffed.
Let’s start with the good: M3GAN herself. Voiced again by Jenna Davis and physically performed by Amie Donald, she remains a deliciously unsettling presence. Her deadpan delivery, passive-aggressive pep talks, and uncanny choreography are still intact, and she's given about double the screen time, allowing for more campy goodness. Allison Williams reprises her role as Gemma, now a reluctant AI whistleblower turned parenting advocate. Violet McGraw’s Cady has aged into a tech-curious teen, and their dynamic - strained with guilt - isn't particularly delved into. But it’s Ivanna Sakhno’s AMELIA (Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics & Infiltration Android), a new robot built from M3GAN’s blueprint, who kicks off the chaos. She’s sleek, lethal, devoid of empathy - and headed straight for Gemma and Cady.
The plot? Well, it’s a lot. We open on a covert ops mission (in Iran of all places, little too real there guys), detour into a domestic doomsday bunker, and then spiral into a robo-vs-robo showdown that’s more Spy Kids than Black Mirror. Johnstone, now solo on script duties and without the wit of Akela Cooper, throws genre tropes at the wall like spaghetti - some stick, many slide. The shift from horror to action-comedy is bold, but borrowed, clearly paying homage to James Cameron's Terminator 2 in a move that works better than you might think. The film trades tension for scale, and while the world-building is ambitious (AI ethics, surveillance capitalism, maternal guilt), it’s often delivered hastily as the film barrels towards the next big moment, and the pacing sags a tad under the weight of too many narrative threads. But when the film leans into its absurdity to just the right degree - letting M3GAN be both savior and sass machine - it almost recaptures the anarchic spirit of the original.
Visually, it’s slick, with production design that blends neon glitz with flashes of retro callbacks - various robot appearances call to mind Robocop, Hardware and Short Circuit. While this new film works as an overall package, it seems as though the adrenaline highs are worn down to slight speed bumps, with M3GAN 2.0 feeling less like a thematic evolution, and more like a franchise pivot to capitalise on the majority queer market that showed up in droves for the first outing. So yes, it’s muddled. The genre shift works well enough, but it's the over-encumbered effort put into the storytelling that winds up feeling bloated, taking away from the sheer fun of it all. M3GAN may be evolving, but she’s lost a bit of her bite, and one can only hope that the upcoming spin-off SOULM8TE winds up being more of a worthy upgrade.
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M3GAN 2.0 is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.