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.
Click here for my full length review at Horror.Media
