Megan is a marvel of artificial intelligence, a lifelike doll that's programmed to be a child's greatest companion and a parent's greatest ally. Designed by Gemma, Megan can listen, watch, and learn as she plays the role of friend and teacher, playmate and protector. When Gemma becomes the unexpected caretaker of her eight-year-old niece, she decides to give the girl a Megan prototype, a decision that leads to unimaginable consequences.
I don't mean to be harsh, but this movie, it just did not work for me. We got Alison Williams playing Megan's designer Gemma, and she becomes the guardian of her niece Katie after an accident. Now, as a way to help Katie cope and get through her grief, as well as help Gemma with her work project, she puts the finishing touches on an android that's then dressed up to look like a girl about Katie's age.
Now things ultimately go awry, as they typically do in stories involving artificial intelligence, where the machine becomes smarter than its creator and then bad things can happen. Well here, everything is telegraphed way in advance. There's no tension, anxiety, or even mild stress in impending situations.
Now Megan, she is a bit creepy to look at, and some of her movements, they're like, nope. But these were very few and far between. The dialogue exchanges, they're obvious and predictable, and then the story takes a huge amount of time to set up the world for us, which I do appreciate.
But then everything after that happens in fairly quick succession, and then the movie's over. Now one thing that I found incredibly strange in this is that Katie looks to be about 10 or 11-ish years old, but the way the story treats her makes it seem like she's about four. I mean, there's a point where she has to interact with Gemma and she rolls a ball across the floor, much like a toddler would do.
It's not that an older kid can't roll a ball, but the actual scene looked very odd and out of place and just not age-appropriate. I think some of this also suffers from being a PG-13. The violence is toned way down and there's actually not much shown.
And I don't need a bunch of blood and guts all over the place, but there were more opportunities to take this darker and extend some of the pursuits to actually create tension and anxiety. And every time a sequence begins to be cool or freaky, it ends, basically neutering the fear factor and causing this to be incredibly boring.
Anyway, not all of the movie is terrible.
The score is odd and mismatched in tone for a lot of the scenes. And I liked how that confused my senses. We hear light or cheery music, but the expressions are ominous.
And that tonal clash worked. There are also two times that Megan did some moves that become unsettling. One is when she gets down on all fours and then chases somebody through the woods.
The other comes towards the end of the film. And I really like the movements that were created for it. They were stuttered and abrupt.
And for the first time in the movie, there was a bit of apprehension at what was being shown. This is an hour and 42 minutes, and I really felt the time. A lot of that was due to the fact that everything was so predictable and I was just waiting for the supposed conflict of a scene to conclude so the story could move on to the next obvious sequence.
So overall, Megan suffers from predictable arcs that lack tension and suspense, which is why I am giving it one and half out of five stars. The world building is extensive, but nothing else in this is captivating or even interesting. When this goes for creepy chills, the scenes are inexplicably cut short as if the story is almost afraid to go for any effective dread or fear.
Megan had the potential to become a new horror icon, but instead she's just a slightly more unsettling American girl doll. If you decide to go and check this out, I really do hope that you have fun with it.
I saw this movie and I can't say if I enjoyed my time on it or not, just wouldn't have seen it if I had knew what was in it... P.S not a fan of such movies 🥹
But I watched it from start to finish so I guess, that makes it count as a good one lol.