M3GAN

M3GAN was so unexpectedly good, when I saw the first trailers for this film I dismissed it as a fun novelty rip-off of the Child's Play series, which although is an obvious influence here, the film actually has a message and stands on its own really well.

The story centres around an aunt who has become the parental guardian for her niece Cody (played by Violet McGraw) following her sisters death. Gemma (played by Allison Williams) works for a toy company which is on the verge of creating "the only toy children will ever need" in the form of M3GAN, a cutting edge A.I robot.

While the plot plays out more or less as you can imagine, 
it's the quality of the acting and satirical social commentary that makes this film stand out above others like it. M3GAN comments heavily on the necessity for human connection and social interaction during a child's formative years and presents the viewer with the ultimate outcome of where children's ever increasing addiction to technology is headed when emotionally absent parents would rather let their I-pads raise their kids for them, and it does this all while not taking itself seriously at all.

It's a lot of fun but I appreciate it more because there were moments which were surprisingly moving,
when you realise that Cody is deeply attached to the toy 
because she is grieving the loss of her parents this subject is treated with the total gravity it deserves. That's a very hard thing to balance tonally when the premise is as ridiculous as it is. 

The only thing its lacking is that a lot of the death scenes aren't shown fully due to it being cut down from an R rating to a PG-13, 
but this isn't too much of an issue as the film isn't really going for a slasher film vibe, its more of a horror/thriller-satire.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with it 
and am a little shocked that I enjoyed it as much as I did.