As the very first image of devil doll sequelM3gan2.0 emerges on screen, of a desert with the words “somewhere on the Turkish-Iranian border” popping up like it’s a Bond movie, you’d be forgiven for double-checking if you’re in the right cinema.
The original, a grabby artificial intelligence (AI) riff on Child’s Play and Annabelle, was a brisk, by-the-numbers domestic horror, released on the first weekend of 2023, a slot usually given to the very worst genre films. M3gan wassmarter than most, often sly and frequently funny and introducing what’s now become a rarity, an almost instant non-IP pop culture icon, whose virality exploded the film into a surprise smash (raking in over $180m from a $12m budget). Like the films it was inspired by, a franchise was inevitable although where we’re taken in M3gan 2.0 was far less of a given. For the follow-up, writer-director Gerard Johnstone has swerved from horror to action while retaining and tweaking the comedy with a release date that’s been upgraded to summer blockbuster territory. It doesn’t always work – a two-hour runtime that’s a little too long, world-saving stakes that are a little too big, funny lines that are a little too not funny – but it’s a mostly watchable second-tier event movie that, in a world of inconsequential sequels that fail to justify their existence, will do.
For M3gan 2.0, Johnstone has picked the Terminator 2 model, resurrecting M3gan to help destroy an even more evil robot called Amelia (Ukrainian actor Ivanna Sakhno) who has gone rogue. Since the previous film, understandably haunted roboticist Gemma (a returningAllison Williams, giving it her all once again) has rejigged her thinking on technology, fighting for the ethical use of AI and urging people to step away from their smartphones. But she’s forced to team up with the monster she created when Amelia threatens not just the lives of those around her but the entire world.
The details of how we get there are absurdly convoluted and it takes a while for Johnstone to convince us that an evil doll movie really needs this much political conspiracy and corporate intrigue (with the addition of every new espionage element, I had to keep reminding myself I was watchinga M3gan movie). But it just about works with time, mostly down to its sheer energy, Johnstone pitching it as a goofy Mission: Impossible for younger teens (I did enjoy this mildly more than Tom Cruise’s boringly bloatedFinal Reckoning). The tonal swerve is reminiscent of that employed in another Blumhouse sequel,Happy Death Day 2Uthat transformed a fun, gimmicky slasher into an indecipherable sci-fi romp. That film couldn’t find a way out of the overly complicated mess it made for itself and the comparatively simple M3gan 2.0 finds a slicker way to reinvent itself.
No one could have predicted just how many memes the first film would spawn but it was still written, by Malignant’s Akela Cooper, with enough self-awareness to suggest that it wouldn’t be a complete surprise. The campaign for the sequel had been rather worrying, however, veering from self-aware to smug, ads built entirely on camp cheek, trailers soundtracked by Britney Spears’s Oops!… I Did It Again, grimly suggesting the film would be crippled by its thirst to go viral. It’s surprisingly restrained though in that regard and any studio-mandated repetition – yes, she dances again; yes, she sings another ballad at an inopportune moment again – feels mostly organic (a rendition of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work is arguably more effective than Sia and David Guetta’s Titanium was in the first). One of the major problems is that the comedy just doesn’t quite land this time around, bar one genuinely funny bit involving Steven Seagal film titles. Johnstone took over writing duties from Cooper but he hasn’t found a way to sustain M3gan’s humour despite ample insert-zinger-here moments.
It’s also clear that Johnstone has retrofitted the film to act as an audition tape for bigger things, showcasing flashier adeptness on a much larger canvas, a sizzle reel to be sent on to execs looking for the next Marvel minion. His debut,Housebound, a thrilling comedy horror that pitched him as a mix of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, was a film of incredible ingenuity and it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed, if not exactly surprised, that his way up the studio system has demanded that edges be smoothed out and ambitions remain boringly generic. The finale of M3gan 2.0 is as familiar as any superhero ending, if a little more coherently choreographed, and while it’s sort of kind of just about effective enough (even if some muddled messaging about learning not to fear but coexist with AI is hard to stomach), I kept wishing we were in less well-charted territory. M3gan 2.0 isn’t an upgrade or a downgrade, but M3gan 3.0 could do with some new code.
M3gan 2.0 is out in cinemas now