M3GAN
Cert: 15 | ★★★★✩

Director Gerard Johnstone delivers a clever, punchy and at times hilariously funny horror comedy in his new film M3GAN.

It stars Allison Williams —Marnie in HBO’s iconic series Girls — and Violet McGraw, with Amie Donald physically portraying M3GAN, an artificially intelligent doll who develops self-awareness. Up-and-coming teen actor Jenna Davis voices the character.

After losing both parents in a car crash on their way to a skiing holiday, eight-year-old Cady (McGraw) is sent to live with her toy designer maternal aunt Gemma (Williams).

Despite her best intentions, Gemma is often baffled by her new role and decides to delegate her parental duties to one of her new inventions, an AI doll with extraordinary abilities named M3GAN.

As Cady and the doll become inseparable, it soon transpires that all isn’t right with M3GAN, who takes it upon herself to parent the young girl the way only she can.

While M3GAN is more like Chucky — the doll from the Child’s Play film series — than it is Ex Machina, Alex Garland’s award-winning 2014 film about an AI who becomes sentient, there is still a lot to love about this hugely enjoyable comedy horror.

M3gan (3)

M3GAN

Despite an array of barely plausible characters that often sound as though they were written by someone who has zero understanding of human interactions, M3GAN does a great job as a companion piece to both aforementioned films.

With in-jokes galore and some hilariously over-the-top one-liners, M3GAN truly feels like the kind of horror comedy that is likely to run and run.

There is very little doubt that the film will replicate its huge American success on this side of the Atlantic, and nobody would blame its makers if they decided to turn this into a multi-film franchise to rival even Chucky’s Child’s Play.