What makes M3GAN tick – and Tok

By the time the Barbie movie arrived on this scene in July 2023, audiences had already been primed and pumped by another blonde doll with a killer wardrobe. Techno-horror movie doll M3GAN had it all; a TikTok craze, squads of creepy people dressed in her iconic outfits, and something smart to say at the heart of the film.  

M3GAN, written by Akela Cooper (Malignant) and James Wan (Malignant and The Conjuring series), centres on grieving eight-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw). Cady’s sent to live with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out), a robotics designer for high tech toy company, Funki, after her parents die in a car crash.

Overwhelmed by parental responsibilities, Gemma decides to send in M3GAN, an AI-operated android in the form of a life-size doll. M3GAN comes out of the box with a directive to “protect” Cady from both physical and emotional harm. But as M3GAN’s AI learns, her definitions of harm grow broader and more dangerous. Soon Cady’s walking around with an endlessly appeasing, pandering and amusing “friend” who has no qualms about taking on school bullies, ripping off an ear, or killing the neighbour’s dog. Has anyone seen the remote control? Anyone?  

PS: If M3GAN scares your socks off, be warned: M3GAN 2.0 has gotten the greenlight and is set for release in 2025. You can’t keep a good doll in the box. 

Watch the trailer for M3GAN

Becoming M3GAN 

M3GAN is many things. In close ups, she’s a detailed animatronic puppet created by Adrien Morot and Kathy Tse of Morot FX Studio. And while Adrien and Kathy performed her facial expressions together, M3GAN’s mouth movements were synched to her dialogue track using a computer programme.

For shots in which her body moves in ways that a robot or puppet can’t handle, (then) 12-year-old dancer Amie Donald performs all her stunts and movements, which were then also digitally enhanced by New Zealand–based effects studio Wētā Workshop. Amie performed while wearing a silicon M3GAN mask, which was later replaced in the film by a CGI version of the face. Can you imagine the live body/dead face horror on set?   

Dressing M3GAN 

M3GAN’s preppy little rich-girl wardrobe is iconic. Her introductory outfit – a camel coloured babydoll dress with its peter pan collar, cap sleeves and double row of buttons on the chest, long-sleeved grey and white striped undershirt and white tights (all the better to hide those robot arm and leg joints), classic black school shoe with the strap and buckle over the top of the foot and a huge Gucci-style statement piece of a striped bow under the chin – sent manufacturers racing to run up their knock-off versions in time for Halloween 2023. You can order yours on Amazon right now! Her wardrobe also includes a dark brown double breasted overcoat for travelling and chasing nasty boys through forests. One must dress for such an occasion. 

Clothes in film always say something. Director Gerard Johnstone wanted M3GAN to have the classic style of a 1950s film star, showing Gemma’s sophisticated feel for the mid-century design that we also see in her house, along with how completely out of touch she is about real children like Cady and what they wear.  

Costume designer Daniel Cruden delivered with a look that doesn’t just say chic, but that emphasises M3GAN’s status as a luxury object for the high-end buyer. M3GAN isn’t some cabbage patch bumpkin, she’s a role model for a privileged child dressed in what could be a school uniform in the Harry Potter universe.  

Promoting M3GAN 

In a pre-Barbie world, M3GAN got the world talking thanks to key music partnerships with Taylor Swift, who allowed them to use her song It’s Nice to Have a Friend with the first trailer, and with Bella Poarch, who let them use her song Dolls for the second trailer – an inspired choice as the lyrics include the line ”Dolls kill, don’t provoke us or we will”. And Sia let the movie use the even more on the nose Titanium for M3GAN to sing to Cady as a lullaby.  

The funky little dance that M3GAN performs to Dolls before she takes a machete to an office worker went on to dominate TikTok. Along with people learning the dance and wearing the outfit, we got them synching up the video clip to different songs with the same beats per minute.  

Production house Blumhouse (The Black Phone, Ma, Us) hired about a dozen performers to creep out New York City by walking around in the outfit with wigs and M3GAN masks, performing M3GAN dances everywhere from the subway, to the top of the Empire State Building, to football games and on numerous talk shows … perfectly in sync, whether their music was playing or not! It was unsettling to run into in the wild and that got people talking.

The characters and clips took on a life of their own, becoming a favourite with drag performers. People connected with the creepy doll to the point of making relatable memes using before-and-after pics of M3GAN from her running through the woods attack. And even Blumhouse founder Jason Blum showed up on red carpets dressed as M3GAN.  

M3GAN: More than a meme 

Finally, like Barbie, M3GAN made her mark because she had something to talk about in the real world: namely, how we turn to technology to avoid processing reality.  

Cady is already struggling with grief and feeling numb and isolated when she goes to stay with Gemma. Gemma doesn’t have the patience to validate Cady’s feelings or help her to process them – she just gives her a placebo that’ll keep her “cheerful” and manage any undesirable behaviour. M3GAN does the work of reaching out to connect, and Cady responds by becoming dependent on her, to the point that she reacts violently when Gemma tries to take M3GAN away.  

M3GAN’s just one doll with a connection to one little girl. But online, social media algorithms already draw on millions of people’s wants to connect them to spaces that’ll distract them and build dependency, while doing nothing to address any real trauma or need that brought them there. And like M3GAN when you try to turn them off, they pop right back up, deadlier than ever.  

Sweet dreams, now. Your M3GAN will watch over you while you sleep.  

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