ALL DOLLS GO TO H3AVEN
M3GAN reminds us that in film, and in life, you can’t fake emotional depth and you can’t force camp
By FFTW’s inaugural guest writer KELLINA MOORE
Film: M3GAN, 2022
Where to watch: On a sentient television that just bludgeoned your annoying neighbor to death.
“Successful Camp…even when it reveals self-parody, reeks of self-love.”
– Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on Camp’
“She’s the apex of 21st century technology wrapped up in four feet of silicone;” she’s yassified Chuckie; she’s a viral TikTok sensation; she’s modeling a sold-out Deftones hoodie and giant platform leather boots for Heaven by Marc Jacobs; she’s staring into your soul from out of the uncanny valley with her too-big blue eyes and perfectly styled caramel-blonde hair, singing Sia’s “Titanium.” She’s a Model 3 Generative Android — M3GAN for short — and she’s a sign of the times.
The titular doll from M3GAN — directed by Gerard Johnstone, written by Akela Cooper, and based on the story by James Wan, who also produced the film — became an icon before the movie even debuted. She danced her way straight into the hearts of viewers in trailers so viral they prompted editors to take the film from an R to PG-13 rating to reach a wider portion of the chronically online population. M3GAN remained the IT girl even after her film debut, when she showed up in an ad for Heaven, the trendy younger sister-brand of Marc Jacobs.
M3GAN’s icon status marks a return to familiar territory for the genre. After years of nearly pathological obsession with the idea of “elevated horror,” it’s nice to see viewers remember that horror doesn’t have to be a deep, metaphorical examination of trauma to be worthy of praise; it’s just as exciting when it’s campy, unserious, and an unabashed good time at the theater. Plenty of my favorite movies are so-called “elevated horror,” and it’s great that more attention than ever is being paid to the way genre films speak to deeply rooted societal fears and inequalities. Still, it makes sense that as we get more and more self-serious wide-release horror movies, some of them are bound to be hollow imitations of what came before.
When The Babadook did a grief metaphor, when Hereditary did family trauma, when It Follows did sexual politics — all with a sharp eye for aesthetics — they felt like fresh and innovative approaches to the genre at its most resonant; genuine articulations of each director’s sensibilities. But by the time we get to films such as Lamb, Men, and Smile, a formula becomes apparent (even in the titles), and the choices start to feel a little less inspired, a little more like empty shorthand for emotional depth. Even Prey for the Devil, a run-of-the-mill exorcism movie produced by Lionsgate (which as far as I can tell only my boyfriend and I saw in theaters), included a scene where the main character receives a copy of van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score — an iteration of horror-as-trauma so disingenuous and painfully on the nose that it had me cackling in my seat.
Enter: the swing of the pendulum, the other side of the spectrum, the return of the horror-comedy. The genre recalibrates right on time, partly in response to the tedium of too much self-serious horror, partly as a return to form; a reminder of the aspects of horror we forget or dismiss when we assume they’ve been “elevated” out of existence.
The late aughts and early 2010’s were responsible for some of the best and most beloved horror-comedies — Zombieland, Jennifer’s Body, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, The Cabin in the Woods. The 2020’s seem set to give us a new batch — The Menu, Barbarian, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and, most notably, M3GAN. Call it a new recession indicator; the bright red lip you buy to make an old dress feel new; a reflection of our collective need for pure escapism. Call it the blood index.
M3GAN is the perfect movie to usher in the return of the horror-comedy because it never tries too hard to be funny or campy — it just is. This is largely thanks to the writing and story-developing team of Cooper and Wan, also responsible for 2021’s spectacular Malignant. The camp element comes from effort, from earnestness and a love of the craft, from the palpable feeling you get when watching a film that the people behind the camera enjoyed making. The enjoyment is infectious.
This sense of play comes in stark contrast to the slew of recent films that seem miserably obsessed with signaling that they are intellectual, above the genre, more than “just” a horror movie. M3GAN is a horror movie that loves horror movies, one that revels in the indulgences of the genre. It is, according to Sontag’s definitions, the superior “naive” camp versus a “deliberate” camp — the excess comes from an unabashed enthusiasm, rather than a self-conscious, self-defeating irony.
Wan has been obsessed with creepy dolls for basically his entire career — his debut, Saw, features Billy the Puppet, Dead Silence boasts an army of evil ventriloquist dummies, and The Conjuring stars the haunted doll Anabelle, who earned her own spin-off. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Wan credits his lifelong doll obsession to a childhood viewing of Poltergeist.
“That creepy clown doll definitely scarred me for life,” he said. “But I also like to say that I'm a big collector of these kinds of things. I love my collectibles, my action figures, and so naturally, the idea of making movies based on one of these things coming to life is exciting for me. It's thrilling, and, of course, in the horror genre, it means I can have a lot of fun with a story like that.”
The charming-yet-horrifying appeal of Billy the Puppet comes from the fact that Wan made the puppet himself in his bedroom, knuckles deep in clay and papier-mâché, forming and painting the iconic red spiral cheeks with his own two hands. This effort earned him increasingly larger budgets, culminating with the one that made M3GAN possible. She is a combination of six different puppets, CGI and animatronics, and a real child actor (Amie Donald), who wore a silicone mask for the longer walking and dancing shots. The result is a form so detailed that it's alternatingly unnerving and almost distractingly stunning. The combination of digital and practical effects (helmed by recent Academy Award winner Adrien Morot) lands M3GAN perfectly in the uncanny valley; her movements are jerky and manufactured enough to be inhuman, but smooth enough that she’s not instantly identifiable as such. No wonder she became so instantly popular — the effort put into her special effects nearly outshines the film surrounding it.
Knowing that M3GAN’s creation required that much effort and dedication is also what’s so tickling about the ‘M3GAN for Marc Jacobs’ promo. I initially assumed it was a simple photoshop effort, maybe made by a fan and not even the brand itself, but a photographer and stylist credit suggests that a team of people went through the effort required to dress and take pictures of an actual puppet. The knowledge that M3GAN herself was in the studio, being posed and wheeled around while someone wrestled a Deftones hoodie over her plastic head elevates a simple marketing campaign to a hilarious, deliciously camp cultural moment.
M3GAN is more than just a pretty silicone face. Cooper’s earnest script, as it waxes between drama and humor, delivers meaningful emotional impact, beneath the camp.
M3GAN’s “primary user” is a young girl named Cady (Violet McGraw). Her parents’ death opens the movie, the inciting incident that sends her to live with her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams), the developer of M3GAN. In one scene, M3GAN and Cady sit in an observed room for a scheduled demonstration of the doll prototype for the toy company higher-ups. The scene moves between humor and sentimentality so abruptly that the tenderness almost comes as a jump scare.
M3GAN
Hey, Cady.
CADY
Hi, M3gan.
M3GAN
So, how would you like to help me make a flower
decoration with nothing more than some colored paper and a rubber band?
[CADY crying]
M3GAN
Cady? Why are you sad, Cady? Is it your arm? Is it
still sore?
[CADY shakes her head]
Then what is it?
CADY
It’s just that every day I wake up in this strange house, and I remember that my parents are dead. It’s like it’s happening all over again. I miss them so much. I’m worried that I’ll forget all the things we did together. That one day I’ll be looking at pictures of my mom like she’s some stranger.
M3GAN
Tell me something about your mom. Something that makes you happy.
CADY
I don’t know. I can’t think of one thing.
M3GAN
Just try.
CADY
One time, she found a cockroach in my schoolbag. She was upset ’cause I didn’t eat my sandwiches. And then all of a sudden, this thing crawls up her wrist, and she just started screaming like a maniac and ran out of the house. That was pretty funny.
M3GAN
Okay, so that’s a memory you won’t ever forget.
CADY
What do you mean?
M3GAN
I mean I’m keeping it for you… Here.
[CADY on recording]
One time, she found a cockroach in my schoolbag. She was upset ’cause I didn’t eat my sandwiches. And then all of a sudden, this thing crawls up her wrist, and she just started screaming like a maniac and ran out of the house. [Chuckles] That was pretty funny.
M3GAN
Anytime you wanna tell me something special about your parents, something funny or sad or anything at all, you just tell me, and I’ll keep it safe. And we can listen to it whenever we want.
Then M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis) starts to sing, which is so unexpected it ratchets the scene back into camp humor. But it doesn’t undercut the emotional resonance of the scene, either — I’m already tearing up in my seat. Hidden within the camp sensibility, the song and dance, M3GAN delivers moving observations about the nature of technology and humanity. Technology, among the frightening possibilities it threatens (and M3GAN has plenty to say about this), can also help preserve our memories, amplify our capabilities for love. Profundities are littered throughout the film, if you open yourself up to receiving them from an evil child robot.
This ability to move effortlessly between humor, horror, and drama is reflected in Cooper’s own understanding of her writing process. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Cooper said,
“I don’t ever really write to tone. I’m not like, ‘This is campy now,’ and ‘Now this has to transition into seriousness.’ I just write the scenes as I see them in my head. It all just starts with the characters. ‘What are the characters doing in the scenes? What are they feeling? What is M3GAN doing? What is she feeling? How is she responding to all of this?’”
From here — from an understanding of character, from a love of the craft — flows the kind of work that has a contagious exuberance, the kind of work that goes on to have a life and modeling career of its own.
The beauty of M3GAN is that it exposes the elevated/trashy horror dichotomy as false. Horror movies can be campy and meaningful. They don’t have to be produced by A24 and overloaded with metaphors and heavy-handed visual motifs to have something interesting to say about the human condition. Horror critics have been arguing for the social, critical value of the genre for ages — any film undergrad who’s written about George Romero’s oeuvre would tell you as much.
As an appreciation for the critical merits of horror becomes more mainstream, let M3GAN remind us that the spectrum of what horror can accomplish is broad, and we do ourselves and the genre a disservice by only examining films we deem “intellectual” enough. Let M3GAN remind us that we do our best work when we are die-hard obsessed, in love, and unashamed of our efforts. Let M3GAN remind us to try as hard as we can, to reek of self-love, and let everyone see. 🪱
Kellina Moore is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction writing at Columbia University. Devotee of the monstrous feminine, reality TV, and maximalism, Kellina uses writing to examine non-serious and overlooked material with serious attention and care, with a special interest in contemporary horror films. Kellina’s work — criticism, personal narrative, and hybrid — appears in FLOOD Magazine, HASH, and The Final Girls. You can find Kellina on Twitter @_babyslasher
Related:
‘Building M3GAN,’ Katcy Stephen
“They look like people but they aren’t people”: ‘The History of Creepy Dolls,’ Linda Rodriguez McRobbie