In January 2023, Blumhouse’s horror comedy film M3GAN became something of an Internet moment. The wisecracking android who does a little dance before slaying her victims became the subject of a thousand memes and the basis of a million TikTok trends. Having been a surprise hit made on a Blumhouse-typical budget of $12 million, a sequel was a given. But it’s very rare if a filmmaker gets something like this right twice in a row. Director Gerard Johnstone returns for the sequel, out this weekend. Johnstone is also the screenwriter this time, taking over for Malignant writer Akela Cooper, who only has a story credit this time. Does M3GAN 2.0 buckle under the pressures of avoiding the dreaded sequel traps? Kind of, but also not really. Let’s discuss.

Two years after destroying the murderous titular android she created, Gemma (Allison Williams) and her now-12-year-old niece Cady (Violet McGraw) have found a little peace and quiet. Gemma has written a book about the dangers of unregulated AI, and she is a public advocate for stricter AI laws. Federal agents break into her house in the middle of the night and inform her about another android named AMELIA – short for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android (Ivanna Sakhno), who has become sentient and has killed everyone involved with designing her programming. Gemma soon realizes she must revive the technology used in creating M3GAN, because she may be the only thing that could take AMELIA down.

I applaud the chutzpah involved here, considering the fact that M3GAN 2.0 almost abandons the horror genre entirely. The first movie is barely a horror movie, but this one is more or less an action comedy, and it doubles down on the camp. It can be a lot of fun, and I did laugh quite a bit, but there are quite a few classic sequel problems that M3GAN 2.0 falls right into. It’s bigger, louder and crazier than the first in every way. The plotting is also unnecessarily complicated and it just becomes more and more ridiculous and convoluted as it goes on. Johnstone’s goal is clearly to stay one step ahead of his audience and throw a curveball at you at every turn, and that can work sometimes, but it can also grow tiresome fairly quickly. Especially since some of the places this story goes appear absurd just for the hell of it, and this film feels like it’s trying to shock you. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’ve enjoyed the work of Allison Williams since HBO’s Girls, and she’s proven herself a versatile and compelling performer since, and she’s again quite good here. As is Violet McGraw, who has settled nicely into the jump from child in peril to surly preteen. Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jan Van Epps return as Cole and Tess, two of Gemma’s coworkers, and they’re fun screen presences. Jermaine Clement joins the cast as a very Elon Musk-ish tech billionaire with nefarious motivations. But the real draw here of course is M3GAN herself, voiced by Jenna Davis, with Amie Donald returning as her stand-in. M3GAN has been quietly existing in the shadows after the events of the first film and has been waiting for the right moment to re-emerge. And she’s as funny and ridiculous as ever, even if it feels like Johnstone is playing the greatest hits of what fans liked in the first film. 

Not much to speak about on the tech front here. The filmmaking is fine, but nobody is really delivering anything truly exciting here. Toby Oliver, who works for Blumhouse frequently, is our cinematographer. And the movie has a bigger scope than the first. Sometimes we feel that in a significant way, and sometimes it feels like they’re aiming a little too high. Jeff McEvoy is our editor here, and I mention him because this film does not feel well put together at all. The jumping from one shot to another is sometimes so frenetic it’s distracting, and despite this sequel being 20 minutes longer than the first, it feels like we rarely have a moment to breathe or take anything in. And it also feels like there are quite a few moments from the film’s trailers and marketing campaign that are gone here entirely. Not sure what that’s about.

Overall, there is still plenty of fun to be had in M3GAN 2.0, even if it feels like it works less consistently than the first film. Johnstone isn’t really saying anything about AI, or the world we live in now, that was not already said in the first film. This script is leaning hard into the camp and absurdity of the first, and expands upon that. And I have to give credit where it’s due, because it’s a gutsy move to change up the formula this much in a genre sequel. By the time M3GAN 2.0’s slightly-too-long runtime was over, I felt exhausted by the whole thing, because this is a film where they keep throwing things at you hoping eventually something hits you the right way. If the problem with first M3GAN was it took too long to really get crazy, this one feels like the insane coke-fueled writers’ room sequel pitch where every crazy idea actually makes it into the final cut, and no one thought, maybe we could reign this in a bit. There are plenty of bugs in this upgrade, but there is still a lot to enjoy here.