M3GAN 2.0 borrows from the best sequels — the villain-redemption arc of T2 and the meta-mockery of Gremlins 2, to name just two — and while this sassy cyborg with the deadpan baby voice remains a brilliant comic creation, the movie’s messaging is muddled. For all of the laughs and thrills, we’re left with a satire about technology that still wants to play nice with AI.
Before it ends with a whimper, though, director Gerard Johnstone’s sequel to the 2022 surprise hit (Johnstone takes over script duties from Akela Cooper, who shares a story credit this time out) brings the kind of cutting, bitchy one-liners and PG-13 android kills that audiences have come to expect. The new iteration of M3GAN talks a good game of being less of a sociopath than she was the first time, but it’s to the film’s credit that we spend much of the film guessing just how much she’s reformed.
One character who’s evolved less than she realizes is Gemma (Allison Williams); in the first movie, she used M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis, embodied by Amie Donald) as a robo-nanny for orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). This time out, Gemma is spending so much time giving speeches and interviews as an expert on parenting without electronics that she’s still ignoring her charge, relying on her employees Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps) as sitters for the now-12-year-old.
But when a government-prototype cyborg assassin named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno, Ahsoka) — created from M3GAN’s supposedly destroyed specs — goes rogue, Gemma is forced to bring M3GAN back to life before the new android destroys the global economy. (This film tackles essentially the same existential threat as the latest Mission: Impossible, with only two-thirds the run time.)
While the original M3GAN was a horror movie akin to a robotic The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Johnstone veers the sequel into heist-thriller territory, maintaining the original’s dark humor and peppering the movie with subtle references to Metropolis, The Ring, and The Addams Family, among others. (There’s also a funny set-up/pay-off gag regarding the filmography of Steven Seagal that may elude younger audiences who need his career explained to them.)
It’s a grinchy delight to have the mean-girl-bot back, and there are enough concurrent pleasures to enjoy along the way, from Jemaine Clement’s obnoxious Musk-esque billionaire to the cool menace of Sakhno’s mechanized villain. But the sequel always seems to be on the verge of something funnier, wilder, and more shocking, without ever quite reaching its potential. It’s a movie that coasts on audience expectation and goodwill but never kicks the wickedness up a notch, making the weak-tea ending even more of a disappointment. And for a film that delivers some trenchant satirical points about our current obsession with screens and mechanization, that’s a limp outcome. Try harder, inevitable 3-quel.
Director: Gerald Johnstone
Screenwriter: Gerald Johnstone, based on characters created by Akela Cooper and James Wan
Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jemaine Clement
Producers: Jason Blum, James Wan, Allison Williams
Executive producers: Judson Scott, Mark David Katchur, Michael Clear, Adam Hendricks, Greg Gilreath, Gerard Johnstone
Cinematographer: Toby Oliver
Production design: Adam Wheatley, Brendan Heffernan
Editing: Jeff McEvoy
Music: Chris Bacon
Sound design: P.K. Hooker, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Blumhouse, Atomic Monster, Divide/Conquer
In English
120 minutes
