Eight-year-old Cady is orphaned after her parents tragically die in their car while riding with her after being caught in a blizzard. Aunt Gemma, a robot from a toy company under great pressure at work, thus becomes her guardian. However, the woman initially does not seem to be able to take care of her niece and she also receives a visit from the social worker who wants to verify the conditions in which the child is. Suddenly comes the solution. Gemma lets Cady interact with M3gan, a life-size doll who can listen, watch and learn and can be both a strict teacher and her best friend. As the days go by, a very strong bond is established between the girl and the doll; now she is more than a toy and part of the family. The company Gemma works for is enthusiastic. But M3gan is learning at an impressive speed. But there are beginning to be some disturbing facts starting with the disappearance of the neighbor’s dog.
There is a cross between Chucky “the killer doll” and the Terminator. But there could also be the puppet of Saw who reincarnates, comes alive and whose action becomes devastating. The test room of the company where Gemma works could be the reproduction of a television studio between that of Kidding and Nope with the killing fury of the chimpanzee.
It is precisely in a claustrophobic space, where there is a declared purely cinematic simulation, that elements that escape control emerge; the family tensions hidden in the fiction of the series with Jim Carrey, the sudden loss of control in the film directed by Jordan Peele. There is a scene where Cady and M3gan have to show the boss and investors of the company where Gemma works that the new toy is ready to be launched on the market. But something doesn’t work. Technology succumbs to the more human side and an intimate dialogue between the doll and the little girl reveals an emotional truth which will then turn into a trap, into a relationship of dependence.
M3gan is pure Blumhouse style that combines with the first hidden and then explosive tension of the cinema of James Wan, here among the producers as well as being co-author of the story. Gerard Johnstone is directing, the second feature film after Housebound of 2014, but the hand of the director of Insidious and The Conjuring is felt precisely for the ability to let one feel sinister signs already inside the home and in the relationship with the neighbor and the pushy dog. Perhaps for Wan it is also a return to Annabelle, which he also produced in that case.
But M3gan definitely has an extra edge precisely in a progression that grows with distance. It starts as a family melodrama and turns into a truly scary horror. M3gan’s eyes are terrifying, they look real. And it is precisely in the way of building the dependent relationship between the doll and Cady that the film manages to be disturbing especially when it is underlined by the musical fragment where M3gan sings “You are my best friend”. From that moment, every movement of him can be unpredictable and destructive.