It is January now and we have a horror movie. January typically is the dumpster of the movie release dates. It is the month where the studios drop the films they think are not very good because the studios know people aren’t going to go see them. Every year in the Year in Review Worst List there are films from January in the Top 10 (some in the top 5 even). Most of the time, my expectations are low during the month.

There are exceptions to that rule and M3GAN is one of them. This movie was fun and highly entertaining. Silly perhaps, but entertaining nonetheless.

Young Cady (Violet McGraw) lost her parents in a car accident involving a snow plow on their way to a ski trip and had to go live with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams), who was a toy designer for a huge company. Gemma was working behind the scenes on a project to create an interactive and engaging life-like girl robot named M3GAN (pronounced Megan) which stands for Model 3 Generative Android.

M3GAN and Cady bonded and became close. Gemma told M3GAN that her prime directive was to protect Cady, both physically and mentally, above all else. As things start to get tougher and Cady started to show strains from the loss of her parents, things started to get dangerous.

The tone of this was awesome. It bounced between a silly, almost humorous tone and tense and anxiousness one. When M3GAN was going through murderous sprees, the film was filled with dramatic moments and an uneasiness fairly earned. And yet, there were many funny, almost ridiculous moments as well and they blended together extremely well.

Jenna Davis was the voice of M3GAN, who was played physically by Amie Donald. Jenna Davis is great as both the caring robot and the menacing killer. Her voice work was exceptional. And the look of the character of M3GAN was sensational. It had the necessary creepiness of the robot doll.

Although many may see this as a female version of Chucky, I think there is more characterization of M3GAN than there was with Chucky. Where as Chucky had an evil spirit involved, M3GAN is that well known theme of the technology gaining sentience and becoming a danger. We have seen this in plenty of other films but this worked well.

The new film from Blumhouse overcame the curse of January and delivered a remarkably engaging and fun film with plenty of violence and some excellent kills and shocking moments. Admittedly, some of the secondary actors felt like they were not the best of actors, but the main performers were great. M3GAN was a much better film than I thought it would be.

2023 is starting off strong.

3.75 stars