Movie Review: 'Megan' is Dopey But Not Quite Dopey Enough

Megan (2023)

Directed by Gerald Johnstone

Written by Akela Cooper

Starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald. Ronny Chieng

Release Date January 6th, 2023

Published January 6th, 2023

Megan stars Allison Williams as Jenna, a roboticist with a knack for creating robots. Jenna's first creation is a Furbie style toy that can learn and carry on unique conversations, far beyond the canned responses of other similar toys. However, Jenna's big goal is to create a fully autonomous, learning, thinking and talking robot. In fact, we even see her misappropriating funds from her employer in a failed attempt to create Megan, a fully autonomous robot.

Meanwhile, as Jenna is recovering from an 'explosive' failure, her life is being upended on the other side of the country. In Oregon, Jenna's sister, brother in-law, and niece, have been in a car accident. The parents of Cady (Violet McGraw) have died in the accident leaving the care of their daughter to Jenna. Never mind that Jenna is ill-equipped for being a parent, she's stuck with the kid and a failed robot and a deadline to try and make a new product in less than a day.

In order to facilitate the plot of Megan, having Cady around inspires Jenna to revisit her failed Megan experiment. This time, it doesn't explode and when Jenna shows off the new Megan to her boss, David (Ronny Chieng), he compares Megan to the creation of the automobile. In order to get Megan working and demonstrate her capabilities, Jenna pairs Megan with Cady and the creepy robot becomes Cady's new best friend and primary caretaker. You can probably imagine why that's not a good thing.

This is, of course, a horror movie. Thus, Megan is a horror movie villain whose particular villainy is explored in the second act followed by a third act showdown. The makers of Megan are not trying to reinvent the wheel. Thus, you can likely predict the nasty twists and turns of the second act as Megan destroys those who pose a threat to her new best friend Cady. Victims line up to be victims and are dispatched thusly. I will say, at least one of the murders, involving a power washer of all things, is unique, but there is nothing surprising happening and not much in the way of tension either.

That said, I do have things I liked about Megan. First and foremost is the production design, sound design and practical effects that went into bringing Megan the creepy robot to life. Megan is played by Amie Donald under incredible make up. Her voice is provided by Jenna Davis and the menace that young woman generates in her little girl voice is terrific. The robotic sound of Megan's movements is the one aspect of tension that the film does get right. When you hear the gears of the Megan robot turning, it does creep you out a little as you wonder what kind of menace she might be up to.

Unfortunately, I just wasn't sold on the third act. I was hoping for something more outrageous and unique than what we get in Megan. Everything you assume was going to happen at the end of a killer robot movie happens. There is no deviation from expectations, there are no surprises and though the performance behind Megan is a terrific physical effort, it's sadly in service of rote predictability. I really wanted the movie to embrace a little something crazy and different, perhaps making Megan an avenging killer rather than just a psycho robot. Sadly, that's not what this movie is about.

In the end, lacking tension, suspense and even mostly lacking in gore and violence, Megan is a little on the dull side. For a movie with so much accomplishment in design and performance, it's a shame that it was all in service of a story that fits with just about every other conception of a killer robot movie. The final fight scene is a supreme let down, it's everything you could predict would happen without even seeing the movie. You can guess the ending of Megan with relative ease and that rote quality prevented me from fully getting behind Megan as anything more than a minor novelty.

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