Artificial intelligence has gotten a bit of a bad rap of late, what with stealing artists' work and threatening to put writers out of business, but it's about to enter its camp era thanks to M3GAN, an all-in horror-comedy about an android doll with withering looks and prep school style, that plays like Frankenstein meets The Bad Seed for the TikTok crowd – you know, for kids.
The bad news for humanity is that this mini mecha queen – already a viral sensation thanks to a canny trailer and some bizarrely-executed dance moves – delivers a more memorable performance than most of the flesh-and-blood actors in recent memory.
That Gerard Johnstone's movie, produced by horror crowd-pleasers Jason Blum and James Wan and written, with palpable relish, by Malignant's Akela Cooper, more or less merely delivers on its marketing dot points is almost besides the point – M3GAN is, above all else, an assemblage of the finest ready-made memes you could hope for, and its star already has a clear run (give or take a Lydia Tár surge) to Halloween costume dominance come October.
It's only fitting that a film about a killer child-bot begins with the death of parents. Tragedy strikes nine-year-old Cady (a moody and tempestuous Violet McGraw, Black Widow) in the opening moments, when her parents perish in a deadly collision, and she's sent to live with her 30-something robotics engineer aunt, Gemma (Get Out's Alison Williams, once again playing admirable second fiddle to a nutso scenario).
But this single, workaholic woman, who has a shelf full of collectible robot toys and a closer relationship with her smart home platform (here dubbed "Elsie") than most people, isn't exactly equipped to mother a newly orphaned nine-year-old.
Under the pump to deliver a new line of Furby-like virtual pets for her employer, the toy corporation Funki, Gemma resurrects her android pet project and sets about building – in a montage perfectly set to, of all things, Charlotte Gainsbourg's Deadly Valentine – a little playmate for her niece.
Enter M3GAN – that's Model 3 Generative Android, if you're nasty – who looks like no doll any sane toy designer would make in the 21st century, which is, of course, part of her immediately absurd appeal.
All bowknots, babydoll shapes and Mary Janes, and with a synthetic ash blonde wig (inspired, according to the director, by Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton) that has more attitude than most of her co-stars, she's more like a Giallo siren who wandered onto the set of Gossip Girl.
Her face of rubbery silicon – think Euphoria's Sydney Sweeney, albeit zapped in a microwave – moves slightly, hilariously, out of sync with her words.
This high-femme bot is in fact cleverly performed by child actor Amie Donald, wearing a rubber mask with some minor tweaks by WETA's effects team, and voiced – in a digitally distorted chirp, halfway between chiding matron and infant terror – by teen actor Jenna Davis. (Honestly, just give them both the Oscar at this point.)
Whenever M3GAN's gears whir and whizz, her animatronic head tilted just-so as she processes her human surrounds, it's as though we're watching a machine that has learned empathy from soap opera acting – every piercing look, every moment of newly-acquired contempt more gleeful than the last.
Once M3GAN is paired with Cady, hardwired to protect her in an Asimovian pact, they're BFFs for life; one moment the little robot is reminding her companion of the necessity of using drink coasters, like some demented finishing school droid, the next she's metallically purring an autotuned version of Sia and David Guetta's Titanium, reconfigured here as a crackpot bedtime lullaby.
Not since David and Teddy (another camp mecha icon, let's face it) tangled with the confusing world of humans in Spielberg's A.I. has there been such a touching pair of pals – especially when Cady and M3GAN start to act up against the glib psychobabble of the adults who think they know what's best.
Unfortunately for her makers, M3GAN learns a little too fast, her enhanced learning capabilities – no stretch from our algorithmically creepy present – rendering her smarter than her surroundings.
You don't have to be a robotics engineer to know where it's all headed: For all the high-tech conceptual gestures, this is a tale of science-gone-wrong as old as time, though the film's most obvious model is The Bad Seed – the 1956 cult classic about a deliciously deranged brat who takes pleasure in antagonising, and then murdering, her moralising townsfolk.
As in that movie, it's impossible not to root for M3GAN: She's the kind of best friend any girl might wish for, designed to protect Cady at all – and we do mean all – costs.
There are few things more heartwarming than an evil movie child on a rampage, but the joy here lies less in the killing than in the little gestures – the way M3GAN cocks her head like a digital diva made flesh; the way her eyes blink arrhythmically, with a mechanical buzz that feels like a put-down in itself.
It should come as no surprise that M3GAN's murderous coding deficiencies are the product of shortcuts to fast-track her to market, and sure enough, her victims swiftly escalate: from a meddling neighbour's vicious dog to an obnoxious boy who seems destined for future date-rapist status (Promising Young Woman could never) to the tech capitalist (a blustery Ronny Chieng, of Crazy Rich Asians and Godzilla vs Kong) you just know will be on the receiving end of cyborg payback.
Generous portions of the action make absolutely no sense, especially when M3GAN starts doing backflips, performing her viral dance, or suddenly breaks into a spidery run right out of The Exorcist, implausibilities that make it all the more entertaining.
The movie couches most of its kills in cheeky humour and suggestive edits, emphasising slays over slaying, which is actually to its benefit – it's a horror movie you can (and should) take your 11-year-old cousin to see; they are going to love it.
It's almost churlish to suggest that a movie in which the star, shrouded in moonlight, tinkles Martika's kiddie-choir masterpiece Toy Soldiers on a piano, could have gone further, but it's kind of a shame that, for its many pleasures, M3GAN ultimately lapses into a pretty standard killer-doll thriller.
A moment of collusion between M3GAN and Elsie, the smart home platform, for example, nearly becomes a Demon Seed riff that, alas, never quite materialises.
True, no-one's exactly here for philosophical enquiry – the kind that powered Sandra Wollner's singular, soulful android tale The Trouble With Being Born – but there are times when M3GAN shows an empathy for its antagonist that suggests a more interesting, technology-ambivalent film.
But because M3GAN is a human-made monster, she must necessarily get her comeuppance – and humankind its illusion of family and security.
No matter – a star is born.
M3GAN is in cinemas now.
