M3gan (2022)

Meghan, Meagan or Megan is a long-standing Welsh diminutive form of Margaret.  

The first time I came across it was as the name of a character in a Clint Eastwood western in the 1980s, but it thereafter became one of the most popular names for North American girls and for reasons I will not go into here, there has always seemed to me to be something inherently phony about this suddenly bloated prevalence of the name. There is a crucial scene in this movie, involving a toy bow and arrow, that I think vindicates me in this petty prejudice.

One can undoubtedly find something a bit Kar3n in this android and her creator. I was anticipating a more open ending, but in the end we are only left to ponder who might be held legally responsible for this trail of bodies, human and canine. 

You might think it is an AI-era update on Chucky and Child's Play, but in truth this is less a sermon on our increasingly inappropriate bonding with devices that appear designed to talk to us but are in fact fairly malignant listeners, than yet another piece of classic squeaky-bum entertainment for pedophobes. 

It is said that it is the arbitrary nature of children that makes them so horrifying for some adults. That unpredictability is perfectly encapsulated here in two of M3gan's key kill scenes, the first featuring another inauspicious child and the second a CEO who encounters her in the corridor of his own corporate lair. 

In spite of a slightly frustrating slow build, I do think this will likely become one of the more memorable flicks of the its kind this decade.