M3gan is back, and in an incredible turn of events, she’s better than ever. 

Following the events of the first film, Gemma (Alison Williams) is an author advocating for the responsible use of AI while continuing to work on her inventions and raising her daughter, Cady (Violet McGraw). An international threat arises from AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a hostile new robot created from M3gan’s original design. The only way to stop AMELIA is to bring M3gan back as a force of good.

Director Gerard Johnstone returns to continue the story of M3gan, and the creative team has made a bold yet effective decision to shift from a horror-comedy to an action-comedy instead. While this does remove all the scary and creepy elements that made the original such a sleeper hit, it also opens the film up to being far more thrilling and funny. M3gan was more of a modern-day reimagining of Chucky,but M3gan 2.0 leans more into the Terminator 2 world, where the only way you’re going to save humanity is by trusting M3gan to get the job done. I don’t quite know how, but all of this culminates in a much better film. The character of M3gan is not a creepy doll watching you sleep, but instead now has the personality of a quippy, sarcastic teenager. The way in which she bounces off Alison Williams and her crew works even better than the first one, too.

Structurally, there are some issues with the story. The film should have been around 15 minutes shorter, as there were some sections in the second act where the pace dragged. Some of the visual effects were a little shaky, but it’s understandable considering the film’s budget of $25 million.

I’m not sure if a M3gan 3 will be made, but I know the character of M3gan will now live long in my memory.