Film Review - M3GAN 2.0

More android mayhem in Gerald Johnstone’s ridiculous but enjoyable sequel

Credit: Universal

Whilst watching M3GAN 2.0, I kept thinking of those ridiculous “fembots” in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). Whether that’s a compliment to this all-over-the-place sequel depends on your mileage with Austin Powers. Given how much entertainment value I’ve derived from that “deeply juvenile” film (my late father’s spot-on assessment of it), for me, it’s probably a compliment. I can’t defend M3GAN 2.0 as anything close to a good film, but I’ll be honest: I found it a damned entertaining one.

The first M3GAN (2022) was a modestly diverting robo-horror flick. It’s the usual whoops-we’ve-made-a-self-aware-AI cautionary tale, this time in the form of a young android girl, whose devotion to her young human companion, Cady (Violet McGraw), turns murderous. Writer-director Gerald Johnstone’s sequel contains none of the stripped-down genre focus that gave that film its mildly disturbing horror edge. This one can scarcely be described as a horror film at all. It’s more like a half-baked sci-fi action thriller, with occasional nods to superhero films, plus a bit of international espionage thrown in. The opening reminded of James Bond for a few seconds, before it started reminding me of Austin Powers.

The ludicrously convoluted plot involves M3GAN (Amie Donald as the body, Jenna Harris as the voice) having secretly survived the carnage of the original, for reasons too silly to explain here. It turns out the US military has another female android assassin called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), designed to undertake covert ops. Unfortunately (and predictably), AMELIA’s first op goes pear-shaped with one corpse too many. Now, the government suspects M3GAN’s creator, Jemma (Allison Williams), of hacking and sabotage, despite her career rehabilitation, post the disasters of the first film. Jemma isn’t guilty, but she, Cady (her adopted daughter), and Christian (her pretentious anti-AI activist boyfriend, played by Aristotle Athari) once again find themselves up to their eyeballs in robotic mayhem. They attempt to stop AMELIA, with a little help from M3GAN, who, as I’ve already mentioned turned out to be not as eradicated as they’d believed.

A couple of Jemma’s co-workers (played by Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps) also get caught up in things, and… Oh, never mind. That’s about as much as I want to say about the plot. Yes, I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but quite honestly, it’s exhausting trying to describe the set-up. The twists and turns are piled on to an insane degree, sometimes so close together that any dramatic impact is immediately nullified. This isn’t scary or suspenseful, but it is amusing, largely thanks to M3GAN’s scathing asides about things like Jemma’s uselessness as a parent. Jemma is badly written to the point that her poorly motivated comedic absurdity becomes an asset to the film. Funnier still is Jermaine Clement, who pops up as a tech bro narcissist without the wit to spot when he’s being seduced by an android.

It all builds to a ridiculous finale that leaves space for inevitable further sequels, whilst pretending to have pseudo-important things to say about co-existing with AI. Personally, even without my Butlerian Jihadist credentials (I loathe AI to the marrow of my bones and refuse to have anything to do with it), it’s impossible to take any kind of message seriously from a film with lines like “Hold on to your vaginas!” Then again, I enjoyed the tip of the hat to other superior works with far more sensible positions on AI, such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Upgrade (2018). There’s also a sly nod to 1980s TV series Knight Rider (1982–1986) that had me giggling.

In short, M3GAN 2.0 is nonsense. But at least it’s entertaining nonsense.

(Originally published at Medium.)

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