If you’re reading this during the last week of October, then you’re in for a treat as this review is part of a trilogy of reviews that I’ve dubbed 2025’s Spooky Trilogy of reviews by The Legionnaire. During the last week of Halloween, I will provide three reviews with the third falling on Halloween, and these are more recent films, with the first one being released back in June, for which I’ve been trying to get a review out. I have been prevented by a combination of bad timing and procrastination. The other two reviews, however, are from this month of October and, spoiler alert, I enjoyed those films a lot more. Now, if you read the first review, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “So what’s the first film that you’ll be reviewing?” Well, if you’ve forgotten already from the title, it is the sequel to the 2023 film M3GAN, this one called M3GAN 2.0.

Now, before I start my review, I just want to share with you my mentality on my experience before watching the first M3GAN film. If you’re a fan of The Simpsons (1989-present), then you may understand what I’m about to say. If not, bear with me, there is a point to this reference. In an early season episode tilted “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy” (I believe it came from season five), Lisa Simpson (voiced by Yeardley Smith) gets fed up with her new doll Malibu Stacy, a not-so-subtle parody of Barbie. In voice snippets, she is irked misogynistic phrases that would provoke any feminist. Being proactive, Lisa gets in touch with the creator of Malibu Stacy and in a couple interactions, she agrees to help make a new doll with Lisa that would be a positive influence on little girls. While the new doll gains traction, Malibu Stacy executives get worried the new toy might hurt the company which leads them to pushing sales of a stereotypical Malibu Stacy doll with a new hat. Lisa tries to warn consumers that the surreal doll was a cheap trick to gain sales, but one consumer notes, “but she has a new hat.” The point that I’m trying to make is that when the movie M3GAN came out in January 2023, I immediately thought of that episode of The Simpsons because, despite M3GAN being just another horror movie that’s basically a female Chucky with artificial intelligence (AI), everyone kept saying “but did you how she dances in the movie? It’s awesome!” This parallels the ending to The Simpsons episode I just described. My apologies if that reference was a bit too obscure, but I now blame those people who flocked to see it because we now have a follow up film titled M3GAN 2.0.

Full disclosure: I actually don’t hate M3GAN. In fact, I did like it for what it was. However, I do think it’s an overrated horror film that people, for some reason, loved. I honestly don’t get it. For those who don’t recall the first film, let me give you a brief recap:

In a nutshell, M3GAN (Jenna Davis) is a horror film about a life-like AI robot who was created by Gemma (Allison Williams), a roboticist, in order to connect with her eight-year-old niece Cady (Violet McGraw), whose parents were killed in a car accident. In predictable horror fashion, she goes rogue and starts killing anyone who she deems a threat to her mission to protect Cady. In the end, Gemma and Cady are able to stop M3GAN from inflicting further harm and she is forever deactivated . . . or so we thought. Because this made $181.8 million on a $12 million budget and received positive reviews, it’s no surprise we got a sequel. So now the question is: was this better than the first film? As usual, let’s find out.

In M3GAN 2.0, we start with Sattler (Timm Sharp), a soldier in the United States (US) Army who runs a top-secret division in the Pentagon focusing on technology. Their latest project, AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), which stand for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics & Infiltration android, is a made from M3GAN’s original design but is intentionally designed for infiltration and assassination missions. After going on a mission as part of a demonstration, AMELIA reveals that she is self-aware and goes rouge. Meanwhile Gemma becomes an advocate for AI regulation and is working on a robotic exoskeleton with her coworkers Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Jess (Jen Van Epps). She’s also partnered with a cybersecurity expert named Christian (Aristotle Athari), who also happens to be an anti-AI activist. After Gemma discovers the existence of AMELIA and how it was designed, M3GAN reveals that she survived the events of the previous film by making a backup of her program onto Gemma’s smart home. She then offers to help Gemma stop AMELIA before the latter does any major damage. Still traumatized from the events from two years ago, Gemma refuses and places M3GAN in a child’s smart device for safe keeping. Moments later, Gemma attends a party hosted by tech billionaire Alton Appleton (Jemaine Clement), who is killed during the event by AMELIA, who used him to copy his biometrics in order to gain access to his company’s systems. M3GAN, who happened to hack Alton’s servers, discovers AMELIA’s plan and retreats back to Gemma’s house to unload what she has discovered. Gemma and her team then realize that they need to stop AMELIA before it goes on an AI takeover and the only thing that can do so is M3GAN. With the encouragement of Gemma’s niece Cady, who convinces M3GAN to help Gemma not because of her programming but due to it being right thing to do, Gemma and her crew use the tools and skills from their exoskeleton project to create a new body for M3GAN where she can take on AMELIA before it’s too late.

I will say though right off the bat that I didn’t leave M3GAN 2.0 the same way that I did M3GAN. To further elaborate, I didn’t feel like I watched an overrated movie that people loved just because. In other words, I actually like M3GAN 2.0 a lot more than the first film. The bad news, however, is that I still didn’t care for it that much.

Now, when I say I didn’t care for M3GAN 2.0 that much, I’m not saying that I disliked it, but I was rather bored with some of the themes and same clichéd story that I was presented. I think it’s mostly because we have seen too many films treating the idea of AI being present in our daily lives that I’ve become to desensitized to it taking over the world in the same vein as James Cameron’s Terminator universe. Maybe that will happen, but maybe not. I think this film is able to get by with cliché plot points because it’s a sequel to an extremely successful (financially) film and it wanted to expand on that universe. However, much like the first film, its only gimmick is the title character herself: M3GAN.

Something I forgot to mention earlier is that unlike M3GAN, its sequel, M3GAN 2.0, is not really a horror film. Rather, it plays like an action thriller with dashes of comedy to the same degree as the first film. So now you’re thinking “this is supposed to be part of trilogy of spooky reviews and this isn’t really a horror film? What gives?!” Well, I decided to include this film for multiple reasons: the first one being that I finally wanted to get this review out that I have procrastinated on for some time now; and, two, I does have an element of AI that itself could be horrific alone if not controlled. My quick thoughts on AI, in a nutshell, is that it can be useful as tool, but not something to replace a creative work. In other words, I despise AI art and AI programs used for writing (i.e., ChatGPT). Thus, if you’re reading this review, know it was made 100 % AI free. That being said, I do worry about AI in general, but not just in the creative field, but also in my faith as well. While I didn’t give much thought to it early on, I now question how people in religious vocation will (hopefully if) will use AI in their field. Just the thought of a priest using Chat GTP to write his homilies leaves me feeling uneasy. While I don’t think it’s a major concern now, I will say that M3GAN 2.0 is a good temporary reminder that AI is still present in our daily lives. Hopefully it won’t affect my faith in any way though I worry it has affected others where they unfortunately have lost faith because of it.

All in all, I wouldn’t say I disliked M3GAN 2.0, but I also didn’t care for it too much for it either. Ultimately, it is just a middle of the road sequel. While I did like some of the action scenes towards the second half of the film, it’s not the most impressive example of the genre that I have seen this year. If you do happen to catch it on streaming or you want to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) but want the PG-13 equivalent, then M3GAN 2.0 should suffice. I am not sure how they’ll do a third film given how this one ended. Also, because of the poor box office results of M3GAN 2.0, I don’t think a third one is being made anytime soon, which is ok by me.