Entertainment

Campy Horror Flick About a Murderous Animatronic Doll Debuts With a 96 Percent on Rotten Tomatoes

M3GAN is programmed to dance, protect, and slay the critics.

Image Source: Universal Pictures

2023 is already offering great movies just a week into the year with M3GAN. The unapologetically silly horror romp already set the internet ablaze with the titular character’s dead-pan knife-wielding dancing in the trailer, but ahead of its theatrical release, the horror-comedy is already receiving rave reviews from critics with a spectacular 96% on RottenTomatoes.com.

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The film is Gerard Johnston’s second entry into the genre, following up his 2014 horror-comedy – which he also wrote and edited – Housebound. The feature-length directorial debut received strikingly similar praise, netting a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes with its outrageous and hilarious blend of frights and laughs.

Critics are calling the film a more-than-welcome update to the “killer doll” formula, merging the likes of the terrifying Chucky and the stoic androids of Westworld and packing them into a flamboyant and stylish 4-foot-tall bundle of sass and slash written (by Malignant’s Akela Cooper) with all the sardonic self-awareness that newer horror audiences love.

M3GAN tells the story of the recently orphaned Cady and her roboticist aunt Gemma’s well-meaning gesture of giving her niece a robotic prototype to act as a friend and protector. When the android-doll hybrid, M3GAN, becomes self-aware, it begins taking its duties for Cady’s safety to very extreme and very violent lengths.

With the film’s early critical success, Johnston continues to be a voice in subversive horror to keep an eye on with his already finely tuned directorial voice and genre-reflexive stylings that take the tried-and-true formulas and flip them on their heads with delightful effect.

M3GAN stars Allison Williams as Gemma, Violet McGraw as Cady, and Amie Donald/Jenna Davis as the body and voice of M3GAN, respectively, and hits U.S. theaters on Jan. 6, 2022.

About the author

John Marchi

John is a freelance entertainment writer with a Master's Degree in Cinema Studies and a penchant for over-referencing movies in daily conversation and defending CGI blockbusters against those that declare Hollywood has sold out. His favorite films include No Country For Old Men, Seven, and The Shawshank Redemption.

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