THE REVEREND’S REVIEW
FT’s resident man of the cloth REVEREND PETER LAWS dons his dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot!
Eight-year-old Cady loses her parents in a tragic snow plough accident. She’s sent to live with her workaholic aunt Gemma, a brilliant roboticist, creating cutesy animatronic toy pets for a Google-style tech company. Yet Gemma’s secret development project is a shockingly life-like Android called M3GAN. Could this little robot girl become the friend Cady desperately needs?
Yes and no, it turns out. M3GAN has a profound impact on Cady, lifting her mood and confidence. The bond between the two is intense. M3GAN has been ‘paired’ with Cady, after all. Gemma’s boss insists they have the world’s most revolutionary toy on their hands – until M3GAN starts killing anybody who dares hurt her human pal.
M3GAN (in UK cinemas) is bonkers, true, but it’s a surprisingly witty, sci-fi horror that takes gleeful pot shots at modern parents’ reliance on tech. Any adult who has ever shushed their kid with a device will squirm watching this. Thankfully, though, it’s not a preachy parable about screen time. At times, it even suggests that devices might be more caring than parents. For example, adults are notorious for checking their phones while talking to children. M3GAN, on the other hand, never breaks eye contact with Cady when they talk. Cady feels seen, listened to, and loved by a robot with more emotional intelligence than anybody else. Until, that is, M3GAN goes all stabby, despatching people with household electricals, as if strimmers and pressure washers are her low-fi comrades. Images of her running on all fours, are delightfully disturbing. M3GAN is at her scariest, though, when she’s just standing in the shadows, watching, monitoring Cady’s life in the same way our own digital assistants monitor ours. She even turns the usual standby prompt into something chilling – “Are you suuuure?” M3GAN says, as Gemma insists she power herself down.
You’ll find another robotic hand in Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, rereleased on Blu-ray and DVD by Fabulous Films (£12.99/9.99). Unlike M3GAN, this bit of tech is decidedly lo-fi (the killer hand cost £400 to make). Despite some fairly bland stories, the film was a turning point for British horror, scoring the first of many anthology hits for Amicus. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are great, of course, but I still can’t get my head around a cast featuring Donald Sutherland, Roy Castle, Alan Freeman and Kenny Lynch.
Room for a little one? How about Ghost Track, (streaming on Prime) which shows how modern camera tech can turn anyone into a filmmaker. This home-made British horror follows a vengeful spirit that haunts (and kills) his former friends. Make no mistake, this is micro-budget filmmaking; but if you can cope with the shot-on-a-phone vibe, it’s got heart and ambition, and a moment featurng a falling car that’s genuinely impressive on a budget like this. No robots though. Soz.
At times the film suggests that devices might be more caring than parents