As we had expected on Friday, “M3GAN,” a delightful horror movie from Blumhouse, opened big with $30 million this past weekend. Who had a chance to see it? I’d love to read your thoughts about this peculiar genre picture.
The film tackles a robot toy who bonds to any child she’s assigned to, and causes unbelievable terrror. It was all the rage on social media with meme after meme using the doll’s face. The only bad thing I can think of when it comes to the success of this movie is that we’ll probably be getting a bunch of sequels soon — cue the title “M2GAN”.
Nobody is mentioning that the budget for “M3GAN” was a minuscule $12 million. It’s certainly almost tripled that already. Nobody does business like Blumhouse. They’ve found a major fanbase that will go see whatever they churn out, but when it’s as well reviewed as “M3GAN” was then expect big box-office numbers as well.
This also proves that there are plenty of people out there willing to buy a movie ticket as long as the subject matter suits their needs. Horror movies are big these days and one can expect more of them to come out in the months to come. They’re cheap to make and audiences love them.
I wrote last week that “M3GAN” is “a totally absurd statement from director Gerard Johnstone. He knows the material he has is silly but he makes the best of it and it works. He turns it into a dark comedy with some very funny, and interesting bits, about the dangers of A.I. and the way grief should be handled with humanity rather than programmed warmth.”