Brian Jordan Alvarez Archives | Deep Focus Review

M3GAN 2.0

Brian Eggert — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 22:44:16 +0000

M3GAN 2.0 taps into today’s rampant debates about how artificial intelligence has infiltrated our lives. Unlike this summer’s other major sequel with a malevolent AI at the center—Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a bloated, self-serious affair with some remarkable stunts—this campy lark has a sense of humor about itself. B-movies and exploitation cinema like this can explore timely issues as effectively as more prestigious fare. They can weaponize their entertainment value to deliver commentary while avoiding didacticism. With its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek, a silly chunk of entertainment such as M3GAN 2.0 can confront real-world anxieties about AI’s role in the erosion of privacy, the death of critical thinking, the elimination of jobs through automation, and the devaluation of human creativity. Such ideas linger just below the surface of this killer robot yarn from Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster. New Zealand writer-director Gerard Johnstone (Housebound, 2014) returns after delivering an unexpected hit with 2023’s M3GAN, which earned $181 million in box-office receipts on a $12 million budget. Johnstone takes a cue from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and offers a sequel that flips the script on the original. Like James Cameron’s all-timer sequel, M3GAN 2.0’s one-thing-after-another […]

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M3GAN

Brian Eggert — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:33:34 +0000

M3GAN is the rare first movie of the year that’s worth your time. Historically, January has been a dumping ground for studios’ unwanted and underwhelming garbage—often a cheap horror movie that serves as counter-programming against the year-end glut of awards contenders. But this Blumhouse production delivers an entertaining, familiar, yet self-aware take on the killer doll movie. Indeed, M3GAN is Westworld meets Child’s Play (1988), the combination intended by 2019’s Child’s Play remake. Except, this is better. The direction by New Zealander Gerard Johnstone, best known for 2014’s excellent Housebound, and the clever screenplay by horror regular Akela Cooper (Hell Fest, 2018), adopt a familiar scenario and themes that prove derivative but well executed. Yet, their approach, bordering on satire, embraces the concept’s ridiculousness with a hint of commentary in a manner reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987). Everyone involved knows what kind of movie they’re making, and even though they conform to an oft-used techno-thriller template, they have fun coloring within those lines. From moment one, the filmmakers announce their satiric intentions when the movie launches into a parodic commercial for “Purrpetual Petz,” an interactive smart toy controlled by children via tablet. Designed by Funki toy company to replace […]

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