M3GAN ★★★½   

ONE of the worst iconic characters in horror film history is the evil children’s doll Chucky.

The fact he has featured in eight films and a television series is not surprising, but that doesn’t make them worth recommending.

M3GAN, on the other hand, is a character I would like to see on film again.

She is a life-size doll with artificial intelligence that starts to become self-aware and subsequently takes her caring responsibilities too far with deadly consequences.

It’s a very simple story that ensures a little more relevance for a wider, current audience.

The recent Chucky reboot/remake failed to do something like ME3GAN has achieved, but also didn’t have the benefit of a significant social media marketing campaign.

ME3AN could have been a victim of its own over-promising marketing campaign but it succeeds in delivering more of a general entertainment piece with both horror and sci-fi elements, rather than falling directly into either of those genres.

There’s a bit of gore along the way, but it’s mostly light, gateway horror.

The film has a nice shock start before we are introduced to the lead human characters – Cady and her aunt Gemma who is a robotics engineer.

Gemma’s team is working for a company that develops and sells children’s toys.

Under pressure to produce something new and ‘game-changing’, Gemma reveals the life-size M3GAN prototype and brings it home for advanced testing as a career and companion for Cady.

But of course, things go wrong.

While there are no plot surprises here and proceedings do follow a familiar path, in this day and age the possibility of an AI like M3GAN coming into existence is genuinely real.

Of course the idea it could be left to its own devices to eventually become a psychopathic killer is just the stuff of movies…or is it?

Watched at the cinema.