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Camp Promises, Corporate Restraint

When I first encountered the bonkers theatrical trailer for M3GAN in the fall of 2022 — during a screening of Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, of all things — I was creeped out enough to consider skipping it entirely.

But thanks to months of Universal’s admittedly brilliant viral marketing campaign setting up permanent residence inside my psyche, I still wound up running to the theater on opening day in promise of the unabashed camp spectacle of the season.

So in that respect, it worked its magic even better than McDonald’s rolling out The Saweetie Meal.

While M3GAN is as formulaic as PG-13 horror comes, it’s substantially elevated by Allison Williams (Get Out, Girls), who once again proves she’s an underappreciated talent. It’s a joy seeing her choose offbeat roles like this (she also produced this time, in a move that surely made her accountants happy). Her performance adds unexpected depth to material that otherwise leans heavily on cliché.

Likewise, young Violet McGraw admirably channels the grief and despair that push her to form a dangerous over-dependence on the emotional bond with her new robotic companion.

Strong Foundations, Slow Delivery

The film’s early scenes work better than expected, establishing psychological underpinnings that bolster it above similar fare and set the stage for a more layered thriller. But that same groundwork is also the source of its greatest weakness:

M3GAN has a crippling pacing problem — particularly in its first two acts.

The unhinged murderous doll we all came to see doesn’t even emerge in full force until two-thirds of the way through. A tighter 90-minute cut would’ve delivered a punchier rollercoaster ride without sacrificing much.

Even with the bloat, a few characters with clearly telegraphed comeuppance simply… vanish from the plot, leaving viewers to wonder why they were introduced in the first place.

So at times, M3GAN feels low on battery and sadly sluggish.

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The Tech We Fear ≠ The Tech We Got

As for the doll itself, much of the creepiness of the trailer lay in a clear decision to focus primarily on subtle expression, eye movement, and eerie stillness.

That restraint was smart and built real anticipation.

Unfortunately, the illusion cracks once M3GAN opens her mouth, and we’re reminded of the film’s budgetary limits.

While the animatronics are certainly a few steps above Teddy Ruxpin in facial gestures — let’s be honest — it’s still nowhere near where we know cutting-edge tech to be today.

Alas, the surface mechanics are hardly the point — the fear factor is in the underlying AI and the unintentional shift that slowly transforms M3GAN from emotional cradle to angel of death.

While kitschy enough to inspire some killer dance moves, inventive Halloween costumes, and her very own SNL parody, the physical aspects of M3GAN are underwhelming. But the conceptual terror of an AI’s warped sense of duty remains effective.

The Unrated Mirage

M3GAN is also somewhat betrayed by the constraints of her PG-13 rating.

It’s bizarrely even less graphic than the film’s original trailer, courtesy of some last-minute trims prior to release, and the final body count in the too-brief final act never requires more than one hand.

But Universal’s release strategy still deserves a slow clap here: they transformed a slightly above-average $12M popcorn flick released in the once-dreaded theatrical dumping ground of early January into a $200M cultural juggernaut.

The swift landing on Peacock the following month helped bolster their parent brand’s then-fledgling streaming service, alongside an “unrated” cut — hyped as the film’s “true form” — which proved a letdown, with zero new scenes added and changes so minor they’d barely earn an R rating, even if it goosed the streaming numbers.

Ironically, apart from a few added F-bombs, two of the three excised shots of restored violence appeared (in part) in the original General Audiences-approved trailer — quietly removed post-release in a gesture that tipped its hand at the streaming strategy and underlined just how calculated this double-dip was.

The Could’ve-Been Classic

Ultimately, M3GAN — both the robot and the movie — needed to go off the rails far sooner, longer, and with a lot more kinetic carnage in order to become the camp classic Universal began to spin but never fully tapped into.

I’d heard upfront that M3GAN was more Ex Machina than Child’s Play, and while she certainly one-ups Chucky in intelligence quotient, she still comes off a lot more like his wanna-be Cousin Oliver on training wheels.

Let’s hope 2.0 gives her the psychotic runway she was built for.

[Edit: It did.]

MALFUNCTIONS AND MARGINAL GAINS:

+ 1 point for ferally sprinting after that kid in the forest on all fours for no reason other than to slay

+ 3 points for dance moves that felt personally choreographed by Brian Jordan Alvarez

- 5 points for landing far tamer than we all know M3GAN wanted to be

Deserved some time in PURGATORY for its pacing, but earns borrowed wings for cultural impact that bring M3GAN just over the line into green-band territory.

📊 [PLAYBACK: RECEPTION]

Budget: $12M
Worldwide Box Office: $181.8M

Cinema DEFCON Threat Assessment:
21 Days — Theatrical-to-PVOD Streaming Window

Verdict
A breakout January hit with genuine legs — only to be pushed to PVOD three weeks in? The studio sacrificed long-term theatrical returns simply to juice Peacock numbers and test a double-dip strategy. Despite grossing 15x its production budget, M3GAN took a crop blade to the throats of exhibitors during a critical period for theatrical survival.

And for that, she becomes the first movie on SINephile to get slapped with DEFCON 1 — an extinction-level threat to the future of communal moviegoing.

In fact, her jaw-dropping streaming release strategy was the entire rationale behind development of the Cinema DEFCON scoring system in the first place.

M3GAN, turn off.

🎬 [PLAYBACK: TRAILER]

The original theatrical trailer that kicked off a viral sensation.

Share this review with your favorite gay icon collector, techno-thriller fan, or anyone who ever danced along with M3GAN on TikTok. And if you’ve got thoughts on a 3.0 version, tap like or drop your wish list in the comments.