M3GAN 2.0… Mark Kermode’s scifi film review [video].
Mark Kermode is back to review this horror scifi hybrid.
You have to admire the sheer audacity of a franchise that looks at its killer-doll origin story—equal parts Child’s Play and Black Mirror—and concludes that the obvious next step is to turn it into a sort of Mission: Impossible with a dash of Terminator 2 and a sprinkling of camp. Whether you admire the result, however, may depend on your tolerance for tonal whiplash and the sight of a tiny android in a skater dress committing grand larceny.
Yes, M3GAN 2.0 is here, and she’s traded her home-invasion horror credentials for all-out sci-fi action. As sequels go, it’s less the next logical chapter and more someone threw the script in a blender and decided to film whatever came out.
This time around, Gemma (Allison Williams), traumatised by her first brush with the pint-sized murder machine, is now an advocate for “ethical AI” (irony clearly not dead in 2025). Meanwhile, her niece Cady is busy studying computer science—because what better way to heal from a killer robot than to design new ones?
All would be (relatively) calm if not for AMELIA, a Pentagon-built infiltrator robot created by copying M3GAN’s schematics. Naturally, AMELIA gains sentience, goes rogue, and develops an agenda that involves hacking cloud servers and orchestrating an AI uprising. If you’re wondering whether this is an unsubtle commentary on military hubris and technological overreach, congratulations, you have correctly guessed the moral of the story.
Of course, M3GAN herself isn’t about to be upstaged by a bootleg knockoff. Reborn first as a cheeky digital gremlin lurking in Gemma’s smart home, she eventually gets herself a shiny new body (after briefly being trapped in a doll that looks like it should be menacing an American Girl boutique). From there, she teams up with her creator to stop AMELIA from merging with an ancient AI mainframe that sounds suspiciously like Skynet’s uncle.
The film does deliver on a certain promise of mayhem. There’s an underground bunker full of doomsday supplies. There’s a sequence at a tech conference where M3GAN pretends to be a dancer. There’s an orange sports car chase inexplicably set to the Knight Rider theme. And there’s an extended finale inside Xenox HQ that feels like it belongs to a different movie altogether—perhaps one starring Tom Cruise, or Austin Powers.
If that all sounds like an absolutely bonkers good time, you may find yourself in the camp of critics who praised M3GAN 2.0 for its unapologetic silliness. The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey called it “a hyper-camp, dumb-funny mashup,” and honestly, she’s not wrong. The film is never boring, and there’s a sort of demented pleasure in watching M3GAN quip and pirouette her way through elaborate action set pieces.
On the other hand, if you were hoping for a horror sequel that recaptures the first film’s gleeful nastiness, you may be in for disappointment. The scares have been largely replaced by over-complicated techno-thriller plotting, and the story wobbles under the weight of its own daft ambition. As David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter put it, “the humor is forced to compete with seriously overcomplicated plotting,” and by the end, you may well agree.
Still, there’s no denying the weird charm of this franchise’s refusal to stay in its lane. M3GAN 2.0 is ridiculous, overstuffed, and frequently incoherent—but also strangely endearing in the way only a movie about a homicidal AI doll sacrificing herself to save humanity can be.
If nothing else, the final reveal—M3GAN’s second backup lurking on Gemma’s laptop—makes it clear that no amount of EMPs will stop Blumhouse from milking this concept for another sequel.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we can only applaud their commitment to the bit.
