Year of Release: 2025
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Starring: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Ivanna Sakhno, Aristotle Athari, Jemaine Clement, Timm Sharp, James Gaylyn
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 4
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Writer/director Gerard Johnstone is back with a sequel to his successful "M3GAN", which a few years ago became another staple for Blumhouse's ever increasing number of potential franchises. The film picks up two years after the events of the first chapter. Gemma is now an author and staunch advocate for AI regulation, and has been partnering with a cybersecurity expert by the name of Christian, in order to pursue that agenda. Her niece Cady in the meantime has taken into self defense classes and is also studying computer science. Gemma is working with Cole and Tess (her team members who also worked on M3GAN) on a robotic exoskeleton, and the demo they perform doesn't go entirely according to plan. Their work however catches the attention of billionaire (or bullionaire) Alton Appleton, who wants Gemma and the team to come work for him. At a big event sponsored by Appleton, he is attacked by a creature named AMELIA, who is in reality an android designed for infiltration and assassination missions, based on the technology and concepts used for the original M3GAN. While M3GAN still lives on trapped in a harmless Moxie robot, she finds out AMELIA has killed Alton and is planning to go through a complete AI takeover (of everything). Gemma and her team decide to create a new body for M3GAN in order to prevent AMELIA from destroying everything.
While the original "M3GAN" was a slick horror B-movie, mixing some Cronenbergian influences with some "Demon Seed" (the Dean Koontz novel and Donald Cammell's film adaptation) ones, this sequel opts to go in a slightly different direction. While the film still has some violent elements to it, it has toned down the irreverence and humor from the original film and has instead replaced it with this quasi James Bond vibe, where M3GAN now is battling her not so distant cousin, while the film is trying to teach everyone on why AI should be regulated and not feared. While AMELIA is introduced as an Atomic Blonde on steroids, only with less humor and principles, M3GAN is now a protector without the extra spice which made her both driven and psychotic in the first installment of the series. The tone shift has been considerable, with the human characters losing even more detail in this film than they did in the first one. Gemma, Cole, Tess, and Cady all remain as poorly sketched out as ever, whereas Jemaine Clement's tech bullionaire (bully and billionaire merged), while ripe for a good satire, is reduced to yet another sexual predator of sorts, one who is tackled by AMELIA learning a fatal lesson as a result. Even Christian, Gemma's partner, who flies a bit under the radar during most of the film, also amounts to very little by the end, since the creative team has placed all its attention on these AI driven characters, who are essentially Bond villains, but without the humor nor the personality (even the final chapter of the film taking place in the XENOX locale, feels like the lair of a Bond villain). It's not a terrible film by any means, but it doesn't really know what it wants to be, and takes itself a bit too seriously for what it is. Amie Donald and Ivanna Sakhno as the robotic entities are the highlight of the cast, while the production team is solid, particularly Toby Oliver's cinematography and Chris Bacon's score. The first chapter managed to be more successful and entertaining than this follow up.
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