M3GAN, You're Not Scary. Please Don't Hurt Me.

7.5. On a scale from one, the most atrocious thing you have ever had to sit through and endure, to ten, one of the best cinematic pieces of our time, M3GAN perplexingly rests at a 7.5. Not to confuse it with seven, good, and eight, great. Just 7.5. It’s as if M3GAN wedged herself between these numbers and found a cozy place to call home. 

“A tad better than seven, but not as good as an eight,” said Daniel Zucker, a film student who recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago. “Above this line are movies that will stick with me.”

M3GAN, also known as Model 3 Generative Android, grossed over $176.3 million worldwide and played in over 3,600 theaters, according to Box Office Mojo. Since opening day on January 6th of this year, this science fiction horror initially projected to gross between $17-$20 million. 

Not only was this a box office success, but many people ran to Google Reviews and expressed their thoughts. With 2,198 reviews, over 1,000 people gave this movie five stars. One of the more popular reviews exclaims how “completely sold” they were from start to finish.

Looking at both of these statistics, one could say this was an all-around success. However, movie-goers like Zucker began to wonder how something so successful lacked a more prominent horror quality.

“I mean, it was a really good movie,” said Zucker. “I don’t think it was a great movie. It didn’t move me so much, but it was highly entertaining and really funny.” 

Of course, with a tween humanoid robot that mercilessly killed anyone who crossed the path of her paired human, Cady, one would expect a highly anticipated, Friday-the-13th thriller to be an adult-supervised movie. However, it turned out you didn’t need to clench the hand of the person sitting beside you. There was humor. 

“My friends and I were laughing hysterically for the majority of the film, mainly during the scenes that were probably meant to be sad or scary,” said Madeline Tara, Zucker’s friend who accompanied him to the theater. “If anyone actually found that scary, they don’t know horror.”

According to Google, this movie falls under four genres: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery. However, the only mystery here is why some people left the theater amused. 

The near pitch-perfect cover of ‘Titanium’, the, ironically, killer dance moves, and animalistic running on all-fours not only flooded Zucker and Tara’s theater with pools of laughter. This contagious amusement soon overflowed and spread to the online world of TikTok. 

“Immediately after I watched the movie, it just kept popping up on my Twitter feed, my TikTok, people were just making fun of the dance moves M3GAN had and how she randomly whipped out into song and mocking her a bit, but also kind of making fun of the plot saying how it was a joke and it wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” said Jazzmin Martinez, a witness of M3GAN’s moves.

This comedic element was unexpected for Martinez and other horror fans, especially when James Wan, director of M3GAN, had other previous successes that lacked this funny bone such as ‘The Conjuring’, ‘Insidious’, and ‘Saw’. 

“I was so excited to see a James Wan movie coming out. I knew I had to see it,” Zucker said with a smile. “But when I was expecting a little bit more along the lines of Annabelle, instead we were laughing in the movie theater. So, I don’t really consider it a horror movie.”

From Zucker’s perspective, there does not seem to be an issue when horror movies include slight comedic chops with mild humoristic quips because, if used properly, they will catch the audience off guard. This then lulls the viewers into a false sense of calm before the storm of terror jolts them out of their seats. 

Looking at all of the elements, such as the director’s past works, the plot, and box office numbers, this would be a top pick for the 2023 horror movie draft. However, this movie became more like the kid that was picked last for dodgeball. 

“The movie failed by not being a sole horror movie, but I don’t think that is what it intended to be,” said Zucker. 

Leaving the movie as a stand-alone horror movie would not fit Zucker’s mold. Instead, he considered M3GAN a horror satire. 

“When you look at it from this lens, then it’s good,” said Zucker. “In the trailer, it felt that they were taking themselves so seriously by trying to be scary, but the actual movie was not. There were some scary parts like the scenes at the end, but a lot of comedy trickled in.”

Granted, the plot is not what makes this movie funny. A little girl’s family died, and she only had M3GAN to rely on while mourning. Watching this unfold was not exactly rainbows and unicorns, according to Tara. 

What made Zucker and Tara turn to each other throughout the film and say how “stupid” some of the scenes were would be the satirical interactions between the characters. 

“I chuckled when the detective laughed about the boy’s ear being ripped off before the boy died,” Zucker said with a grin. “After this, he said, ‘sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.’ That moment alone felt like the epitome of satire.”

This scene, along with other moments, made Zucker believe that the movie made fun of actual scary movies because it included classic tropes with a spin. The robot turned evil, the aunt embodied the creator of a villain, and many more examples fell into the iconic horror trope. Because of this, Zucker believed they should have marketed the movie to be a comedy. 

Even though comedy was a missing genre from Google’s results, Tara noted how the horror aspect in M3GAN was still relevant to the overall experience.

“Sure, I think it is a qualifier to be a horror movie,” Tara said with a scoff. “To me, horror just has to have some fear element to it. M3GAN murdering people to protect the girl is that element. Whether I think it’s a strong horror movie or not, I don’t.”

Regardless of the lack of jump scares and Chucky-like thrills, Zucker and Tara enjoyed the movie. Seats in their theater filled up fast, and people around them couldn’t stop talking about how good the movie was once it was over. 

Knowing that people left the theater and enjoyed what they sat through, maybe there wasn’t a flaw in Zucker’s rating scale. This movie will stick with people for a long time, whether that is a good thing or not. If it’s for a negative reason, make sure M3GAN doesn’t find out.