A broken clock is right twice a day, but even at its funniest, “M3GAN 2.0” feels like it’s here too soon and too late. Filmmaker Gerard Johnstone returns with a frustrating and tedious follow-up to Blumhouse’s smash-hit horror movie about a killer robot from 2023.
The director reunites with original “M3GAN” stars Allison Williams and Violet McGraw for his bizarro sequel — an exhausting two-hour expansion that introduces several different versions of M3GAN (played by Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) and a strange new frenemy known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno). Johnstone steers the murderous android into a muddy redemption arc just as he forces the franchise to abruptly switch genres. Swapping out scares for action beats, that unexpected approach creates a colorful techno-apocalypse with admirable ambitions aimed at something like “Terminator II — for Girls!” Still, it lacks life.
Johnstone loses his way, taking over writing the script from the wonderfully funny Akela Cooper (“Malignant”). She created the first “M3GAN” with James Wan and has a story credit on the sequel. Her wickedly dark humor lives on in M3GAN’s vicious one-liners, even as Johnstone’s exposition-heavy script drags the story down. From “Evil Dead” to “The Strangers,” scary movies will often make dramatic tonal shifts between their first and second chapters. That’s as good a strategy as any for keeping seasoned slasher fans on their toes, but storytelling categories as potentially diverse as horror and action can draw in totally different audiences. Bolting those two crowds together can be tough, and “M3GAN 2.0” multiplies its problem by seeming ambivalent in the penumbra of real AI.
Tasked with more screen time than anyone (or anything) in this film needs, Williams reprises her role as Gemma. A reluctant caregiver and negligent toy inventor — picture the mom from “Child’s Play” combined with Mark Zuckerberg on an apology tour — she almost lost her niece, Cady (McGraw), to an anxiously attached prototype a few years ago. At age 12, the Orphan Formerly Known as M3GAN’s Best Friend has mixed feelings about her brush with the deadly doll. Sure, Cady’s high-tech companion killed four people and a dog; not to mention, she threatened to lobotomize her aunt. But that was then, this is now, and as M3GAN explains upon her triumphant and bratty return, she only did those things because she is “a person!” with “feelings!!” and she was “UPSET!!!”
In her first movie, M3GAN was campy enough to become an accidental gay icon, on par with quietly fabulous tormenters from Pennywise to The Babadook. Now, in June 2025, Blumhouse is sending her sequel to theaters on a confused wave of Pride-themed marketing so niche it seems likely to undercut the film’s PG-13 rating. The hit-or-miss studio tends to misdirect its success, but Johnstone helps Blumhouse turn “M3GAN 2.0” into an extravagant work of misunderstanding with a narrative that is insecure and emotionally clunky. An explosive source of passive aggression, M3GAN is beloved by moviegoers for her unfiltered reactions and atypical combination of traits. She’s lethally maternal but motivated by a specific type of single-minded terror that’s usually reserved for narcissistic men and the grudges of preteen girls.
Arm the scarier version of M3GAN with real firepower, and you could have some extra grisly horror-action scenes. Sadly, Johnstone can’t make himself cut enough dialogue to deliver on the promise of even his smartest set-pieces. M3GAN hacking into a rentable street scooter should be bloody and memorable. Instead, the sequel chains its bitchy anti-hero to a morality lesson that won’t end. Compared to other Blumhouse sequels, the robotic misfire recalls the toothlessness of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” while making you seriously fear for the fate of future projects, like the upcoming “Ma” sequel or “Black Phone 2.”
Johnstone’s repeated attempts to find the soul of “M3GAN 2.0” are better than releasing a film you know is shallow. Die-hard fans will discover enough pleasing weirdness — particularly in its laughably pandering conclusion and inconsistent special effects — to make the entire chunky affair seem worthwhile. Still, M3GAN’s greatest asset was never her heart, but her lack of one. It’s somewhat baffling, then, that she is easily the most likable character in a lineup of algorithmically hateable humans. The sequel’s director hails from New Zealand, and that’s presumably how he got Jemaine Clement to play a whacked-out tech billionaire. But Hell only knows where Blumhouse started looking when it was time to cast a slippery tech ethicist as Gemma’s profoundly pretentious love interest (Aristotle Athari).
Useless narrative threads and too many wasted elements give away “M3GAN 2.0” as an amateur effort made by a talented horror filmmaker who has not yet mastered action’s specific visual language or skill set. That said, when Blumhouse makes the risky move to come back to “M3GAN” with its spinoff “Soulmate” (already scheduled for next year), the series should try a hybrid experiment mixing nightmares and nunchucks. Only then will true “M3GAN” devotees see the queen of the bear crawl properly unleashed.
From Universal Pictures, “M3GAN 2.0” is in theaters Friday, June 27
Grade: C
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