Released on January 3 to theaters, M3gan was a deadly start to the new year. Directed by Gerard Johnstone, the movie is a balance of horror and comedy. While it does create an original movie that has interesting moments, it still feels like a basic horror movie that has been made hundreds of times before.

The movie follows Gemma (Allison Williams) adjusting to becoming the legal guardian to her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). This change being the aftermath of Cady’s parents’ deaths. Wanting to help Cady and wanting to focus on her work, an engineer at a toy company, Gemma decides to continue a project her boss deemed too expensive to continue; the project, a robotic AI doll that will accomplish the tasks necessary to raise a child. While giving a robot that has access to a vast information base and many different parenting programs to a child that just lost her parents, her only source of dependency, sounded like a “good” idea to Gemma; it was in fact not. The robot in question, M3gan, gets progressively more violent as she gathers more information deciding to go after anyone who hurts Cady, mentally and physically.

M3gan focuses on the mental reasons behind Cady’s attachment to M3gan and how it affects her growth along with the consequences that Gemma must face due to her own creation.

M3gan was better than expected but wasn’t an amazing movie. With the short run time the movie is fast paced and interesting to watch but does not introduce anything new to the horror genre.