“M3GAN,” 2023’s first sci-fi horror movie was released and has expectations to live up to.

Sci-fi is no stranger to having elements of horror added into it. After all, killer robots have been a concern ever since the three Laws of Robotics were created. This movie isn’t about just any regular robot having a malfunction. This movie is all about a beloved doll going haywire.

“M3GAN” is the story of a little girl named Cady that loses her parents in a car accident during their ski trip. After recovering in the hospital, Cady is soon released to her aunt Gemma, a developer at a toy company working on her latest toy innovation: The “Model 3 Generative Android”, or as she likes to call it M3GAN. M3GAN is a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence that learns about her owner and does anything to keep her registered owner happy. However a glitch in her system corrupts M3GAN, causing her to “get rid of” anything that harms Cady, emotionally or physically.

The visuals of the movie is actually done quite well. With a mixture of CGI in some scenes and practical effects in others. All of it done to great effect. M3GAN herself is designed through CGI. This helps in giving her a true doll-like appearance. On top of that she is played by two actresses. One gives life to the CGI doll by moving around as the body and another voices over as M3GAN, adding to the believability that the words she speaks looks like it’s coming out of an animatronic mouth. Though some of the more practical effects for the gory scenes can be slightly unrealistic.

The story itself is also quite interesting as well. Especially since you see complex psychology used to great effect for the characters in the movie. The depression one faces when losing family, internal questions about being a good parental figure, even actual principals like attachment theory are represented in the movie.

M3GAN is also a very compelling character. While her A.I. does get some errors later on she does feel like an actual person and the feelings of caring and compassion she shows towards Cady is quite real. A.I tends to have the feeling of a cold and calculating machine. While intelligent, the emotions a human feels is almost never there. However, for M3GAN emotion is almost always present from feelings of happiness and joy towards Cady to murderous intent for any that do Cady harm.

The movie isn’t anything groundbreaking in the genre of sci-fi or horror and the cliffhanger scene at the end seems a little too cliche. It’s still an entertaining movie to watch, and if you like either genre this movie is based on I would highly recommend watching while it’s still in theaters.