M3GAN - Chucky don't have dance moves like these!

Story and produced by James Wan. Directed by Gerard Johnstone (Housebound).

Screenplay by Akela Cooper (Malignant).

So it seems this is good? RT is 94 and Metacritic is 72. I guess I have to watch it now. It occurs to me, though, that I’ve never actually watched a killer doll film in earnest. Never saw any of the Child’s Play films, never saw the Annabelle films (never even heard of them until after I watched The Conjuring recently). I did see some ventriloquist 's dummy movie on MST3K or Rifftrax, but I can’t actually remember if it killed anyone or if the ventriloquist was the evil one.

I’ve been a sucker for killer doll/ventriloquist dummy movies going back to the original in Dead of Night. Guess I’ll have to check this out.

If it’s as good as Malignant, then I can see why the RT is so high.

Reminds me of the creepy Ukrainian who fancies herself real life Barbie

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This was my 14 year old daughter’s 2nd in-theater ‘scary’ movie. Another one she attended w/ friends over the weekend. Awaiting feedback from her, but I heard it was pretty comedic, and not a straight up horror flick.

Yeah, I thought I was laughing at the trailer but it turns out I was supposed to be laughing. With reviews this good, I’m definitely seeing this. Ideally, in a rowdy and crowded movie theater.

Exactly this. I’m looking forward to seeing this one in a group.

I really liked this.

Not sure if qualifies as horror at all, which is fine by me! Heavy on characters talking and being built, a couple of scenes of violence that aren’t horribly gruesome by today’s standards (the ear and the nail gun). A couple of very minor jump scares.

And they just nail the intentional uncanny valley effect for the Android.

Okay I’m going to say it: This is the problem with the Rotten Tomatoes scoring system. A 94% movie doesn’t mean that the movie is 94 out of 100; it means that 94% of reviewers thought that the movie was above average. And I can see why people liked this movie—I liked it too—but man the 94% rating seems misleading.

I think that this movie suffers from being too straightforward, too by-the-numbers, and it definitely suffers from being PG-13. The violence is so toned-down, it was really hard for me to get into. It was definitely creepy and had a few jump scares, but it was never really horrific or gory. And I’m not even big into gross-out movies, but you at least want some terrifying scenes that you can all talk about afterwards.

I enjoyed it, but it could have been so much more.

Well, yeah. Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate of thumbs up/thumbs down. Of course it’s going to be useless for anything but how broadly appealing a movie is.

Anyway, I really liked M3gan. It’s true it could’ve gone harder during the final act, but it was fun and funny, and really, all I missed was some gore shots with Kurt and David and if cutting those means more kids could see it, I’m fine with it. It feels like a great gateway horror.

My favorite thing about Em Three Gan, which I hated*, is the actor playing the comedic sidekick. He’s a dead ringer for a buddy of mine, so when I was looking for clips to show my friend – you only get the briefest of glimpses of him in the Em Three Gan trailer – I discovered the actor and his friends have made their own low- to no-budget feature-length comedies and posted them for free on YouTube. And I ended up watching about an hour of this one:

https://youtu.be/YziovxOn6kE

Oh lordy, is it dumb and low-brow! But also, I thought, very funny. So thanks for that, M3gan!




* in the interest of full disclosure, when my shirt rides up, sometimes you can see my “Annabelle rulez” trampstamp

OK. WTF. I’m about 10 minutes into A Spy Movie, and this thing is hilarious.

Right? At first I thought it was just me, but I’m pretty sure this is a group of very funny people laboring under the disadvantage of not being more famous and therefore not having more money to make their movie. But it’s a funny script, obviously written to play to their own strengths.

I only stopped watching last night because I had company coming over, but I’m looking forward to finishing it later. Easily as good as Macgruber!

M3gan is now on Peacock, in both the original PG-13 cut and an unrated one.

I went into it expecting a straightforward updating of the Chucky formula, and instead got an ahead-of-the-headlines science fiction parable about how we get the sort of technology we deserve. Which was fine by me, I had a good time. But I can see how those go in expecting a straight slasher flick might be disappointed; those parts felt a little bolted on.

I watched the unrated version, which I guess had more blood than the PG13 theatrical release.

I was left with a couple of questions.

  1. Allison William’s character is going to jail, right? I know we’re supposed to cheer for the happy ending, but she did suspect her creation murdered the bully and the neighbor and didn’t bother to tell any authorities. I’m pretty sure what’s left of her company is going to offer her up as the scapegoat.

  2. Why did M3gan kill the CEO and the flunky? They didn’t even suspect anything was wrong and they were about to globally launch her product line. I’d think that’s what she would’ve wanted.

  3. Talk about Chekov’s robot! I knew Bruce was going to be the solution.

I liked that M3gan apparently charged through her butt.

You are the sunshine at the end of a brisk stream, my friend.

mumble

The Jimmy Fallon one or the Stephen Furst one?

The Jimmy Fallon one! Brian Jordan Alvarez, the guy on the right who plays the comic relief scientist in Megan, is a dead ringer for a longtime buddy of mine. That’s how I started watching Spy Movie, so I could show him a scene and say, “Hey, this guy totally looks like you!” Which he agreed with, by the way.

But then I discovered I love Alvarez’ and his friends’ sense of humor (they’re basically a package deal, including the “Stephen Furst one”. I’ve since watched Spy Movie, several episodes of The Gay and Happy Life of Caleb Gallo, and various other YouTube shorts.

Mumble comedy! :)

Agreed. This was fine overall but as for the “unrated” version… Deadly Friend is more of a horror movie.