M3GAN 2.0 review: 'an amusing reflection of the current moment'

In the two years since satirical sci-fi horror comedy M3GAN came out, a lot of the generative AI tech its killer toy-bot plot was riffing on has become worryingly commonplace. It’s appropriate, then, that its outré sequel M3GAN 2.0 has undergone an exponential upgrade in keeping with its title. If the first film operated in a speculative sweet-spot somewhere between getting in under the wire and being late to the party (turncoat robots and humanity-destroying AI have, after all, been a staple of cinema for decades), the new film’s goofily preposterous plot is so outlandish it manages to make a weirdly trenchant mockery of our current chaotic reality, right down to the fact it opens with an AI-powered attack on Iran by an incompetent American government agency that hasn’t thought through the destabilising consequences of its actions.

As accidentally tasteless as that sounds, the film quickly returns us to the world of the first film where M3gan’s chastened inventor, Gemma (Allison Williams), has volte-faced into becoming a public evangelist for responsible tech restrictions while simultaneously trying to take a more hands-on approach to parenting Cady (Violet McGraw), the orphaned, now-teenaged, niece she mistakenly left to the care of the over-zealous M3gan doll first time round (M3gan is once again partly played by teenage dancer Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis).

As the film opens, that murderous robo-protector now exists in cyberspace only, her body having been destroyed and her source code supposedly erased. But when a US military-sanctioned cyborg assassin ripped off from M3gan goes rogue (she’s called Amelia and is played by Ivanna Sakhno), Gemma – with Cady’s help – has to reboot, rebuild and reprogram her original creation to take it down, Terminator 2-style.

Once again directed by Gerard Johnstone and produced by horror maestros James Wan and Jason Blum, the film certainly isn’t shy about embracing its influences, paying blatant tongue-in-cheek homage to the aforementioned T2 (and the Matrix) as it morphs into a full-scale action extravaganza. Consequently, it sacrifices the slasher movie element that made the first film such a hoot, though mercifully not the campiness, which provides waves of weirdness that ensure that, while M3GAN 2.0 is no candidate for greatness, it is, in its own bizarre way, an amusing reflection of the current moment.

In cinemas from 27 June

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