InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 1

FILM REVIEWS
couldn’t be more ill-equipped to take care of a child, despite the
fact that she builds playthings for them. She’s career-focused,
wealthy, planning vacations with pals — simply put, caregiving is
a huge interruption in her life (her level of empathy for her
orphaned niece is neither established nor particularly at issue in
the narrative).
“M3GAN isn’t so much a horror
movie as a meme generator…
the humor is constant but
it’s also toothless.
It just so happens that Gemma is in the process of a major
technological breakthrough. She’s building M3GAN, short for
Model 3 Generative Android (a truly exquisite piece of jargon
gobbledygook). M3GAN is designed to be a learning computer, a
caretaker, a best friend, and an educator — a do-it-all helper to
take the burden of parenthood off of your strained soccer parent
shoulders. At first, Gemma’s boss, David (Ronny Chieng), thinks
the whole thing is a waste of time, but once Gemma shows him a
convincing demo, the company is on board with a rushed and
heavily promoted launch of this new $10,000 toy. Meanwhile,
Cady and M3GAN are becoming closer by the minute. It shouldn’t
surprise anyone that murder comes into play, in addition to some
vague swipes at the sacrifices intrinsic to parenthood and the
way in which screen time and technology have become
surrogates for some. But these are merely pretenses for what
amounts to a pretty basic, camp-leaning comedy about a killer
robot, one that unfortunately pulls its graphic punches and
frankly isn’t funny enough to carry the project past a serious lack
of gory violence. Reports suggest the film was recut for a lighter
rating; that might be its biggest mistake.
M3GAN isn’t so much a horror movie as a meme generator. The
much-hyped moment where the killer robot girl does an equally
killer dance lasts longer in the trailer than it does in the finished
film. The humor is constant, but it’s also toothless; it’s supposed
to be funny when M3GAN does bad things, but she only really
does them to bad people, so we feel safe in her presence. There’s
nothing remotely unpleasant or suspenseful about any of this,
and there’s barely any detectable grue; all four — yes, that’s all —
of her kills occur mostly off-screen, and one is by proxy (we’re
not counting the dog). There will be those that say this movie
does exactly what it says on the tin, but it does so in the safest
and most predictable way possible, and it ultimately has nothing
to say about parenthood, technology, or even killer robots. All
M3GAN is interested in is providing GIF material.— MATT LYNCH
DIRECTOR: Gerald Johnstone CAST: Allison Williams, Violet
McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Jen Van Epps DISTRIBUTOR: Universal
Pictures IN THEATERS: January 6 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
THE OLD WAY
Brett Donowho
Despite being arguably the popular genre of the classical era of
Hollywood, the Western has faded over time into the background
of mainstream cinema. The Old Way looks to revisit that
throwback style of a bloody revenge tale, rife with horse riding
and gun fighting, but it never much feels like a genuine Western.
Thanks to an anonymous set design and too dry narrative, the
film never realizes an immersive viewing experience, with its
setting left to feel more like mere window dressing than a
meaningful engagement with the genre.
Nicolas Cage (somehow starring in a Western for the first time,
believe it or not) is Colton Briggs, an old-school gunslinger who
has tried to bury his past and start a family. But as these things
go, his new and peaceful existence is shattered when James
McAllister (Noah Le Gros) — whose father was killed by Briggs
twenty years prior — shows up at his house while he is away,
killing his wife in an act of premeditated vengeance. For a
moment, the film slows to revel in this pure horror, even lending
the feel of something like Funny Games; but that tension is
swiftly dissipated, and we’re swept back to the familiar narrative
saddle. Briggs takes up the gun once more, only this time, his
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