M3gan (2022) Dir: Gerard Johnstone
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When I saw the trailer for this Gerard Johnstone directed Blumhouse horror, my first thought was that it looked extremely weird. I did, however, kind of want to see it, but, ultimately, I ended up leaving it. That said, when I saw it was streaming, I felt like it would be a pretty fun film to spend my evening watching.
Visually, this film actually didn't look too bad. The robot looked a little goofy at points, but that kind of worked, in an odd sort of way. The film utilised a combination of animatronics, puppetry, VFX and even a real child actor to bring its sinister robot to life, and honestly, the end result was both creepy and kind of cool.
The writing wasn't exactly exemplary, but the film did actually have some interesting, even heartfelt, moments, as well as the more expected creepy ones. It wasn't particularly scary, no, but, I got the impression that the film never tried to be something other than it was, which was a silly horror film, and in that sense, it worked.
While I wasn't the biggest fan of Allison Williams' acting in the film, I wouldn't say that she was overly poor. She lacked a little personality at times, but some of her scenes towards the end of the film were better. Honestly, her biggest pitfall was that she didn't have much chemistry with her co-stars, unfortunately.
The young Violet McGraw did her job fairly well, I felt. It wasn't a world-beating performance, but she had some decently acted scenes, and never felt out of her depth. I thought her scenes with 'M3GAN' were her strongest - she was able to show a lot of her character's bigger emotions quite well.
Jenna Davis provided the voice for the film's antagonistic robot, and, in my view, she did a fairly decent job. In conjunction with the various practical effects used, as well as child actor Amie Donald, I felt that the end product was pretty good. Davis gave the robot just enough personality to make her character feel somewhat creepy.
The supporting cast didn't didn't really provide much in the way of quality acting, but, even so, I'll give brief mentions to the more notable appearances; Ronny Chieng, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, and Stephane Garneau-Monten. Of these, I'd say Chieng was the most entertaining.
Overall, I must say I had quite a good time with this one. It felt like the modern 'Child's Play', in many respects, which is no bad thing. Sure, it has plenty of issues, but it's fun enough to make it a worthwhile use of an evening. I know that there's a sequel coming soon, so hopefully they proves to be just as fun.
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