Horror films are outlets for trending cultural fears, so a movie about a machine-learning robot going violently haywire while serving as caretaker for a child is about as 2020s as it gets.
That's the story of M3GAN, the titular killer doll whose name is an acronym for "Model 3 Generative Android." When young Cady's parents are killed in a freak crash, she ends up in the custody of her tech-toy innovator aunt, Gemma. Workaholic Gemma uses Cady to test M3GAN as a proxy friend and emotional support tool—while at the same time showing the doll off to her bosses as a potentially profitable consumer product.
