When the trailers for M3gan dropped I was far from impressed and planned not to see the movie. However, as reports came in from both the horror community and non-horror community that this was actually an entertaining film, I became curious enough to see it. I held my expectations in check though, having remembered that the horror community lost its mind over X, and I found that slasher far from coherent.

M3gan worked and I quite enjoyed myself at last night’s screening. Instead of pursuing a serious realistic tone this screenplay and movie leaned more into camp and irony, leaping to playfulness rather than seriousness to achieve its entertainment.

Cady (Violet McGraw) after becoming orphaned goes to live with her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) who is a genius at artificial intelligence and robots creating robotic toys. Gemma, thrust suddenly into the role of parent, and utterly at a loss as to how to help Cady process her grief, adapts her robot toy project M3gan to assist, imprinting the android on Cady with the directive to protect Cady from harm. Harm having a wide definition and M3gan with a capacity to learn, adapt, and self-program leads to the expected horrific outcomes.

M3gan can be closely compared to Alex Garland’s Ex Machina another film that deals with the complexities of artificial intelligence and androids that develop their own agendas. Where Garland’s film is a serious mediation on the subject, and quite excellent, M3gan utilizes a far less serious tenor to achieve a similar story. Of course, both stories owe a deep debt to Shelly’s Frankenstein as both ex-Machina and M3gan explore in their own manner the responsibility that creators owe their creations.

A quite pleasant surprise in the movie was Ronnie Chang as Gemma’s boss playing a role that while it had comedic elements was not principally devoted to laughter.

Director Gerard Johnstone and writer Akela Cooper managed to violate a few screenplay ‘rules’ about who and what you can kill in a film and not lose the audience, displaying a confidence and skill that elevated the project.

M3gan is fun, campy, and entertaining and is currently still in theaters and available on VOD at ‘theater at home’ pricing.

To lighten the mood following the masochistic demons from beyond in Hellraiser I watched, along with my sweetie-wife, 1974’s Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla.

Released near the end of the ‘Shōwa’ era, 1954-1975, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is the 14th film in the franchise and pits the now heroic kaiju monster against am alien robotic duplicate.

In apparent accordance with an ancient prophesy that a monster will come to destroy to world Godzilla reappears and unlike his more recent heroic turn, once again cuts a path of destruction across the Japanese islands. Simultaneously two teams of scientists, a hard-science specialist, and an archeologist, chase down clues to recent events while shadowed and threatened by mysterious agents, some of which turn out to be another vanguard of invading aliens and INTERPOL officers. With the arrival of the OG Godzilla, the imposter is revealed to be a cyborg construction of the aliens. Mechagodzilla is more powerful than Godzilla that is until the correct interventions by priests, princesses, and the scientists. As with all the 70’s Godzilla movies the film’s resolution is never in any doubt and one does not watch kaiju movies from this period for suspense and dramatic turns, but instead for several men in outrageous costumes throwing down on a set filled with miniature mountains and buildings. Shōwa era Godzilla films, save the original masterpiece, are a fun guilty pleasure. I remember being quite disappointed when Godzilla vs The Smog Monster player at the local drive-in and no one in my family had the slightest interest in going. (I did eventually, only a few years ago, see the film and it is truly one of the weirdest Godzilla movies.) Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla will never listed as a great work of cinema nor is it every frightening, but it makes for a perfect light distraction during the more intense fare of the season.

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is currently streaming on HBO Max.