In the three years since M3GAN danced and stabbed her way across the big screen, AI has developed both in its technical efficiency and cultural prevalence. Artificial intelligence, and the morally ambiguous tech oligarchs behind it, have embedded themselves in our day-to-day lives. Even the process of typing up this review is confronted by Microsoft’s writing suggestions, with prompts like “Need help writing a birthday message?” or “Need help with a school essay?” The world is being smoothed out by eerie robotics, spinning out towards a future potentially free of human problem-solving. But is this frictionless existence a meaningful one? This is the existential question M3GAN 2.0 positions itself to answer—a far cry from the schlocky, B-tier slasher fun of 1.0.
Gemma (Allison Williams) has reformed her robot-building ways to become an outspoken advocate against technology’s overreach; as she explains in a speech to Congress, “You wouldn’t give your child cocaine, why would you give them a smartphone?” Her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), is now a teenager, channeling her latent anxiety at being M3GAN’s (Jenna Davis’s voice, Amie Donald’s body) ward-turned-victim, into martial arts. Part of the success of M3GAN was the relatively simple dynamic between these three leads: Gemma was Dr. Frankenstein, M3GAN was her brutal monster, and Cady was the innocent victim. M3GAN 2.0 suffers from the sequel curse of necessarily complicating this dynamic. Cady is now an angry teenager, Gemma is newly self-aware—no doubt a buffer to assist the audience in their heightened awareness of AI—and M3GAN is no longer the story’s main threat.
Instead, M3GAN 2.0′s main villain is the equally vengeful AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), who is purchased by the U.S. government to be a rentable robot assassin. AMELIA, predictably (but immediately, thank goodness), goes rogue, intent on securing robotic autonomy. Gemma is contracted to hunt her down. The first hour of M3GAN 2.0 has the makings of a fun spy caper, with Gemma and her team (Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps both reprising their roles) hunting down the murderous bot alongside a disappointingly docile M3GAN. There are car chases and secret-agent misdirects, and while it’s a tonal shift from the first film’s horror, it’s zippy and packed with jokes that allow both Williams and Alvarez a chance to showcase their television-approved comic timing. When the kills do eventually come, returning director Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) relies on the snappy editing and gory cutaways that worked so well in the first film.
Unfortunately, Johnstone also wrote this script solo, dropping original writer Akela Cooper, which in turn sees the film lose control of the story in its second half. The unpredictable left turn for the M3GAN universe becomes a complicated balancing act, which leads to disappointment when the balls being juggled cascade into a bloody puddle. The winding halls of the film’s final setpiece are impossible to untangle, seemingly representative of the labyrinthian plot. The sheer number of new characters—including a “philanthro-capitalist” played by Jemaine Clement, Gemma’s AI-conscious boyfriend played by Aristotle Athari, and a gum-smacking government operative played by Timm Sharp—and the scaled-up geo-political consequences of M3GAN and AMELIA’s behavior makes for a third act that is both self-important and unserious.
It seems that Johnstone and his collaborators learned the wrong lesson from M3GAN‘s shocking success (the original did fairly well in the box office and launched a thousand memes). Audiences weren’t won over by the film’s philosophical untangling of man and tech, but flocked to see M3GAN’s uncanny physicality and unique murder tactics. This was a robot who combined the familiar (bitchy villain dialogue) and unfamiliar (galloping after a child like a dog in a frilly dress). She was Chucky meets Heathers. Unfortunately, neither AMELIA, nor this new more morally driven M3GAN, engender that same delighted shock, and so Johnstone settles for the worst of both worlds—something that limps, with exaggerated metal squeaks, into the future.
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writer: Gerard Johnstone
Starring: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Ivanna Sakhno, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp, Jemaine Clement
Release Date: June 27, 2025
