The possessed doll and animals coming to life idea has been done many times before with movies like “Child’s Play,” “Annabel,” “Ted,” “Paddington,” and even “Winnie The Pooh.” But “M3GAN” is different.

 “M3GAN” combines the horror movie vibe and the playful heartwarming vibe with a unique story and approach. 

The movie starts with a nine year old kid named Cady losing her parents in a car crash during a snowstorm. She is then sent to her aunt Gemma who is a roboticist for one of the biggest toy companies in the world: “Funki.”

Cady struggles being without her parents, and her relationship with her aunt isn’t the best. She can’t make friends because she’s not going to school, and it’s hard for her to be social in any way because of the trauma of her parents’ deaths. 

In the meantime, her aunt Gemma is slammed by work, way overdue with her project and is on the brink of getting fired. After three weeks of no progress with Cady, Gemma decides to take a huge risk and start a new project. 

This project is a robot named M3GAN, who can cybernetically pair with a human, particularly a child, and become a great friend and comfort object. Once M3GAN is paired with its human, it will adapt to that person’s lifestyle and base its actions on their needs. This new project is very satisfactory to the company and is set to hit the market to become what is said to be the biggest technology advancement since the automobile. 

M3GAN is a huge help to Cady. She takes her mind off her parents and becomes a great friend that she can play with and talk to when Cady is sad.

After a couple weeks M3GAN starts doing weird things behind Gemma’s back, for example pushing a kid in front of a car that is bullying Cady at daycare, also murdering their neighbor and her dog that they’ve had conflict with before. 

Gemma quickly realizes something is terribly wrong and shuts M3GAN down, ties her up and takes her back to the company building for testing. When they get there, M3GAN gets free and, without giving too much away, the movie comes to a conclusion. 

There is not a single point in this movie where you will not be entertained. There is non-stop action and suspense packed throughout the film, and it will leave you wishing the movie wasn’t over. 

The acting throughout the movie is impeccable. One of the continuing flaws with new movies is terrible casting, but this movie did it right. The voice-over for M3GAN is perfectly versatile for the evolution of the character and Allison Williams is great as Gemma. 

The balance of brutal action, wholesome moments and a moderate length of one hour and 42 minutes makes for a great flow in the movie. Even though M3GAN turns into a murder robot, she still genuinely cares about Cady and will do anything to make her feel better, even if it means killing the person that bothers her. 

Ultimately the uniqueness of the movie is what makes it so good. Having a new idea in 2023, especially when it comes to movies, is extremely rare, Director Gerard Johnstone did just that and it worked out perfectly.

This was by far the best movie to come out through the start of 2023 and should be nominated for a few Oscars when the awards come around next year.