Gerard Johnstone's M3GAN draws back the dark curtains of the killer-doll movie genre and lets the sunshine in. The picture is a blast for a number of reasons, but mainly because of its one-of-a-kind star, an unnervingly implacable robo-girl named M3gan, who's literally a piece of work. M3gan isn't a toxic horror brat in the tradition of Chucky, but she probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere near that nail gun out in the garage, either.
The picture is more fun than we might normally expect in the cursed movie month of January. Director Johnstone, making his second feature, takes a counterintuitive approach to the genre, and it brings a fresh clarity to the action, some of which plays out in brightly lit labs and sunny woodlands. He also embraces the limitations of the movie's PG-13 rating, which he says is not a result of traditional studio editing pressure. As he told the GamesRadar website, PG-13 is what he was aiming for—even to the extent of reshooting some scenes that might've verged too close to an R. "Some of my favorite films, like Drag Me to Hell, are PG-13," he said. "It's fun having to rely on sound and suggestion so much."
