Blumhouse's M3GAN uses a similar premise as the 2019 Child's Play reboot, but perfects its formula. The accelerated evolution of AI technology has sparked interest in its real-world possibilities, and stories like M3GAN show a possible future that may not be too far away. That, together with the timeless allure of killer dolls, made M3GAN a horror hit in early 2023. However, M3GAN is not the first movie to follow a sociopathic children's toy that goes rogue when protecting its owner.
In 2019, a Child's Play reboot attempted to revitalize Chucky by updating his origin story to the 21st century. This time, the iconic doll is an animatronic toy that can learn from each kid's behavior and adapt to it in order to become completely personalized. Like the original Chucky before him, he gains consciousness and takes an interest in gruesome violence. While the Child's Play reboot received a moderately positive reception, it didn't match the original movie's success, and it failed to launch a modernized Chucky franchise. Just a few years later, M3GAN attained box office success, accompanied by viral popularity even before its release, and all of it with basically the same premise as the 2019 Child's Play reboot.
M3GAN Nails The Balance Between Silly And Scary
Unlike a horror villain like Annabelle, M3GAN isn't an evil entity the main characters have to run away from, nor is she a paranormal being that hides in the shadows. M3GAN remains by her owner's side all day, fulfilling the very purpose she was designed to accomplish. The real horror comes when M3GAN seems too good at her job, which contrasts with her barely human face and her body's unnervingly organic movement. Hence, when M3GAN does something funny or silly like singing "Titanium" or dancing with a knife in her hand, she sets off a weird mix of emotions that blur the line between comedy and horror.
This focus on the instinctive fight-or-flight reaction M3GAN causes isn't that prevalent in the Child's Play reboot. In it, Chucky quickly learns to move and behave like a human being, and nobody who meets him seems to mind a creepy doll strolling about. Chucky starts killing everybody in the most gruesome way with no other apparent purpose other than his own amusement. As the story progresses, the characters accept their fate when a two-foot-tall toy chases them down, and Chucky becomes a one-dimensional villain that doesn't look organic enough to match the original Chucky or artificial enough to match M3GAN's creepy but still PG-13 factor.
M3GAN Gives The Doll A Strong Personality
Apart from the visual cues from both killer dolls, there's one major factor that differentiates M3GAN from Child's Play's Chucky. In the 2019 Child's Play reboot, Chucky's malicious intentions begin to show through from the get-go. He attacks one of Andy's friends with a knife and kills Andy's cat, then kills Andy's stepfather and begins his killing spree. While this made sense for the original Chucky — a doll possessed by a serial killer's resurrected spirit — it doesn't really fit the reboot's angle on artificial intelligence gone rogue. There's little reason behind Chucky's action besides cruelty.
M3GAN, on the contrary, first forges a strong bond with Violet McGraw's Cady as she develops her consciousness. Her introduction scene suggests an innate sense of malice, but all of her actions can at least be justified as extremely efficient methods to protect herself or her owner. M3GAN only kills those who stand in her way like a mindless robot, yet she also develops her own humanlike temper. Insolent, arrogant, and quite stylish, M3GAN takes a bare-faced approach to her cruelty that doesn't go overboard and forces the human characters to question their sanity as she stands still in the same room like an innocent diva.
M3GAN Gives The Human Characters Reasons To Spare The Doll
In 2019's Child's Play, Andy forgives the infamously murderous Chucky for killing his cat and attempting to kill his friend while Karen remains oblivious to the doll's intelligence. Chucky's victims only react terrified to him once it's too late, and even then they limit themselves to screaming and running away like easy prey. Nobody pays too much attention to Chucky's movements throughout the movie. And when they do, they consider him a regular toy that just happens to look very creepy.
Unlike every Child’s Play and most other horror films with a physical evil entity, M3GAN clearly establishes why Cady and Gemma don’t just stomp the toy into pieces at the first sign of self-awareness — both of them need M3GAN. Cady forms a close attachment to M3GAN after her parents' death. Feeling alone and distrustful of her disinterested aunt, Cady's only way to deal with her trauma is by seeing M3GAN as a flesh-and-blood sister and best friend. Allison William's Gemma, as much as she'd want to get rid of M3GAN, needs her to succeed professionally after an unexceptional streak of inventions. Instead of being stubborn or naive, the human protagonists hold off destroying the killer doll until it's absolutely necessary, and when they do it, they don't hold back.