INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film M3GAN 2.0. Please note that this is just one of the many movies I will have watched each year, and my initial grade for this film may change over time, for better or worse. To stay up to date on my thoughts about other movies and any potential changes in my opinion on this one, follow me on Letterboxd.
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PLOT
Via Letterboxd: After the underlying tech for M3GAN is stolen and misused by a powerful defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia, M3GAN’s creator Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal.
REVIEW
Back at the start of 2023, M3GAN pulled off a rare cinematic feat in it was the yearly kick-off movie and yet it was actually good. Not just good, but legitimately one of the best horror films of the year, at least in my book. That film struck a killer balance of horror and comedy, evoking the same twisted charm as Child’s Play, only swapping out the doll for a rogue AI robot with attitude. Typically, the movie that opens the year is either forgettable or among the worst releases, but M3GAN managed to rise high on my ranked list of the 200+ films I saw that year. Not one of my top favs of the year, but close.
Flash-forward to 2025, and after the first film’s success, we now have a sequel aptly titled M3GAN 2.0. This time around, Blumhouse has shifted gears, aiming for a summer box office splash rather than a surprise early January success story. As someone who genuinely enjoyed the original, I was curious to see how they’d evolve this potentially iconic new horror villainess. But once the marketing started trickling in, I couldn’t shake a growing sense of unease, and not the good kind. Still, I try to go into every movie with an open mind, even when the trailers haven’t won me over. Unfortunately, in this case, my worst fears were realized.
M3GAN 2.0 takes the tight horror-comedy framework of the first film and tosses it out the window in favor of a cringe-inducing, meme-chasing, clumsily constructed sequel that thinks it’s Terminator 2 but lands somewhere closer to a sci-fi superhero parody. It completely abandons what made the first film such a blast, namely, the horror elements, and instead morphs into a safe-flavored action-comedy that doesn’t even seem to understand why people liked M3GAN in the first place. This is, without question, one of the steepest quality drops from a part one to a part two that I’ve ever personally experienced.
Let’s talk about the most baffling change - M3GAN herself. In the original, she was this perfectly creepy blend of deadpan wit and unpredictability, a character who felt like a fresh addition to the horror villain pantheon. In this sequel? She’s...the hero. Yep, the child-murdering, dog-killing robot is now a misunderstood AI savior. The movie attempts to hand-wave this shift by saying she’s been “learning in the shadows” through a home security system. But I couldn’t buy into it for one second. She committed multiple murders in the last film, and now I’m supposed to root for her because she sings a moody pop song in a moment played for laughs? Come on. I sighed out loud more than once watching what they reduced her character to.
The sequel also tries to recycle some of the first film’s memorable beats, M3GAN dancing, creepy one-liners, sudden violence, but this time those moments feel defanged and forced. Where she once danced before delivering a kill, now she dances for an adoring crowd like a TikTok mascot. It’s not funny, and it definitely isn’t scary.
The new antagonist, a rival AI named AMELIA, feels like a dull replacement, far less colorful or compelling than M3GAN was as the villain in the original. The supporting cast seems like they didn’t even get the memo that the movie had shifted genres. By the time everyone catches on that they’re in a sci-fi comedy rather than a horror, the tone had already lost me.
To be fair, the film’s visual and practical effects are still top-notch, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still squeeze a few chuckles out of me here and there. But those moments are isolated flashes in an otherwise messy attempt at franchise expansion. The choice to shift genres and reframe M3GAN as a kid-friendly antihero is one of the most bewildering creative decisions I’ve seen from a major studio like Blumhouse. They clearly wanted this to be their Terminator 2, but instead it feels like a Child’s Play sequel where Chucky decides to fight ninjas in the name of protecting the very kids he used to terrorize.
This was a massive disappointment and a prime example of a sequel that totally misunderstands its own appeal. I’m giving M3GAN 2.0 a mediocre initial grade of C+, and honestly, they should’ve just stopped at the original if this was their grand idea for a follow-up.
GRADING
