M3GAN (2023)

 

After its highly successful cinema release earlier this year, Blumhouse's M3GAN is getting a Blu-ray, DVD and digital release from Universal.

When the parents of nine year old Cady (Violet McGraw) are killed in a car crash, Cady goes to live with her aunt Gemma (Alison Williams, best known to horror fans for GET OUT). Gemma is a hot-shot robotics engineer at toy company Funki and is currently working on a modified design of the company's popular robot pet. When Alison finds her new job as a parent more difficult than she had imagined, she speeds up development on a side project she's been working on. A few modifications and M3GAN, a robot girl companion for Cady, is born.

Initially all goes well. Cady loves her new friend and the executives at Funki are happy to pour large amounts of money into a project they see selling for around $10 000 a unit. But M3GAN turns out to be a bit more protective of Cady than anyone might have foreseen.

A highly entertaining killer robot on the rampage picture with a healthy dose of satire, M3GAN runs along the same lines as Lars Klevberg's very enjoyable remake of CHILD'S PLAY from 2019. Whereas that film felt like an extended Black Mirror episode, once things get underway M3GAN is far more interested in being a fun pulpy piece of mayhem, and there's nothing wrong with that, especially as it has a bit more to say about how technology might view us than the average picture of this type. 

Universal's disc release gives you both the theatrical and 'Unseen' ie uncut versions of the film. Apparently the theatrical release had some of the murders trimmed after the distributor was made aware that younger children were copying M3GAN's dance moves on TikTok. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the uncut version gives us a bit more gory detail. Also included are three short (around five minutes each) featurettes - A New Vision of Fear which has interviews with cast and crew; Bringing Life To M3GAN which reveals that there was a lot more complex puppeteering work than you might have thought; and Getting Hacked which is gives more details on the making of the movie.

M3GAN Unseen Edition is out from Universal on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 17th April 2023 and it's already available on Digital Download