‘FEAR AUTOMATA’ – Preview for ‘M3GAN’ (2023)
To help her niece Katie deal with grief, brilliant roboticist and toy maker Gemma (Allison Williams) gets more than she bargained for when her creation, M3GAN begins to exhibit questionable behaviours that put those around her at risk. The creation of a new family unit, ushers in the presence of a robotic family member with the best of intentions and whilst the initial phases of interactions appear to be sweet and heart warming – this quickly changes into something more problematic and lethal.
Though clearly capitalising on our modern fear of sinister automation and sentient AI, the film might be somewhat of an homage to DEADLY FRIEND (1986), CHILD’s PLAY (1990) and to a lesser extent ‘ELECTRIC DREAMS’ (1984) though the latter is a stretch as it is apparent that this robotic horror is anything but hilarious.
The convenience afforded by modern technology in the extreme circumstances present unwanted and unmanageable consequences, that play into the discussions of humanity, mortality, nature vs nurture and the growing threat of technology as we are ever more dependant upon it. Taking cues from the aforementioned films, it is evident that the robot is incredibly unsettling, whilst impressive in its presentation still manages to elicit feelings of that uncanny valley when she is acting less human and more like an animatronic. Truly something bizarre and disturbing.
As a partnership between horror heavyweight James Wan and newcomer Akela Cooper, it is apparent that this film will fry-ten the collective circuit boards of audiences worldwide when it is released in the US on January 13 next year.
Vance Ang has primarily been professionally published in bodybuilding and fitness since 2005, having written extensively for hardcopy publications such as Australian IRONMAN and FLEX; but also for e-publications such as RAW Muscle and more recently the media platform, The Evolution of Bodybuilding. He is a Melbourne based policy and strategy consultant currently undertaking his post graduate study in Law. In addition to bodybuilding, conservative politics and Savate (French Kickboxing), he has long been a fan of movies and cinema of all genres – subsequently prompting an interest in modern story telling, that being script writing. He is in the process of writing his first horror novel ‘Providence’