‘M3GAN 2.0’ Review — Is It Summer’s Salvation Or Its Judgement Day?

Blumhouse is at it again, seeking new franchises in the deep web where there might not be any, at least none that might be watchable to a general audience.

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M3GAN 2.0 is officially out, and despite the meme generation of the first one and a bold marketing campaign, it’s glitching at the box office. I’m sure horror purists and fatigued sequel haters will say “I told you so,” but I still have to take a dispassionate step back and ask if it’s any good. Without consulting the Internet, I can say based on my experience with the film, it is an overstuffed folder of files, though it’s not without entertainment value.
M3GAN 2.0 picks up two years after the last movie in a world where government agencies are using the patent of M3GAN’s creator, Gemma (Allison Williams), to build semi-autonomous androids for black ops and assassinations. The result is AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno, Ahsoka), the Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics & Infiltration Android, which goes rogue on its/her first mission.

Why? The fembot fatale has her own objectives that include killing everyone who had a hand in her creation. This revelation sends the Feds after Gemma to either question, apprehend, or protect her from the robot assassin she might be responsible for.
Since her last run-in with a death machine, Gemma has become a best-selling author and started a new company making breakthroughs in AI and robotics. She is also trying her best to be a mom to her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), but is still more focused on her work than parenthood. There is such a gulf between them that their definition of a home life consists of Gemma as a workaholic, ersatz life coach, and Cady discovering hapkido and the joy of Steven Seagal movies. (For real, that’s a plot point.)
Regardless, life is looking up for Gemma until she is confronted with the news that another one of her inventions is out there murdering people, and the fact that she has a mysterious, unseen benefactor that turns out to be something from her past haunting her. Yes, it’s M3GAN (played again by the dual performances of Amie Donald and the voice of Jenna Davis), but this time, she is back to make amends and protect Cady, or so it seems.

That sums up the movie very well: nothing is what it seems, and there’s so much going on at once. There are a few subplots and several twists that pay off in unexpected ways, where the word “convoluted” (which I have been hearing a lot regarding M3GAN 2.0) definitely applies. I wouldn’t go that far, but this film tries to be a lot of things.
It’s less of a slasher than its predecessor and leans more heavily into the situational humor of an action comedy to send up that subgenre. There are fast cars and shootouts with high-tech weapons that go as full throttle as a Fast & Furious entry or a Knight Rider fan film.
At a certain point, things turn into a proof of concept for a new rendition of the latter or a similar idea when Gemma’s employees and Cady become a team running point for M3GAN from a secret underground lair while she’s in the field. It’s like if Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. starred Deathlok or a Terminator as a main character instead of as a guest star.

I give writer, director Gerard Johnstone credit for trying something different when he could’ve gone the Smile 2 route, going bigger on a larger stage, but resetting to tell a redundant story that’s less scary. The thing is, Johnstone does a bit more than he has to, so he can justify extra twists, turns, and gags as well as action sequences that suggest a higher budget.
M3GAN, an almost indestructible, hyperintelligent robot, shouldn’t need to infiltrate a high-security facility with a flashy wingsuit flight, but it’s there to inject that Mission: Impossible energy from a time before that franchise nuked the fridge.
Johnstone also dabbles with some of the godlike AI business of Final Reckoning’s Entity, but he nerfs it pretty quickly before it goes anywhere. He throws a lot at you in a tight two hours to keep things moving and interesting, and M3GAN 2.0 moves at a brisk pace. It is a decent distraction. If I were to give it a thumbs up, it would be a mild one.
You might have fun with it, but it’s not anything I’d urge you to go in haste to a theater to see. You could wait for it to boot up on streaming.
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M3GAN 2.0
PROS
- Jenna Davis is very entertaining as M3GAN, and tops her performance in the first one
- Allison Williams is also good
- The Steven Seagal references are funny
- Doesn't have to be scary or atmospheric to be fun or different
CONS
- Oddly shies away from gore
- Gemma's biggest problem is herself between bad decisions and not listening to M3GAN when it counts
- Jemaine Clement has a small role to the delight of his fans, but he's not integral ultimately
- A lot of the humor falls flat
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