She's your new best friend and humanity's worst nightmare, a high-tech AI doll with a homicidal streak. But what do animatronics, competitive dance and eyelid lubrication have to do with "M3GAN?" They're a few of the secret ingredients that helped bring the titular doll to life in Hollywood's next horror hit.
A titanium terror in Mary Janes, M3GAN leaps off the screen right into the uncanny valley in the Universal film, now in theaters, in which roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) programs her eerily lifelike invention M3GAN to watch over her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw) — until the self-learning companion bot goes rogue and starts killing anyone who gets in her way.
Ask Amie Donald, the New Zealand actor who makes her film debut as M3GAN, why the sentient doll sends shivers of fright down moviegoers' spines, and she grins. It's those bone-chilling eyes, she says over videochat, and they're even scarier if you fix them on your prey while dancing toward them down a hallway.
