When M3GAN arrived in 2023, it was a perfect storm of high-concept horror and viral pop-culture energy, anchored by a hilariously offbeat killer-doll premise and a keen sense of camp. The robotic child companion, which turned violently protective, felt like a spiritual successor to Child's Play, only with a TikTok-era twist. Naturally, Universal was quick to greenlight a sequel, and now we have M3GAN 2.0, once again directed by Gerard Johnstone and produced by James Wan and Jason Blum.

This time, the story picks up with M3GAN's AI consciousness fractured after the events of the first film. Gemma (Allison Williams) is trying to move on with her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), but a new corporate experiment is underway to build an even more advanced AI, AMELIA, designed with combat capabilities and nearly limitless adaptive learning capabilities. When AMELIA goes rogue, and it's discovered that she was built on M3GAN's own design framework, Gemma is drawn back in as the only person who might be able to stop her.

Gerard Johnstone returns at the helm but pivots away from the first film's campy horror energy toward a more self-serious action sci-fi techno-thriller. Scripted once again by Akela Cooper, the movie attempts to elevate Megan from a killer villain to a protective antihero, mirroring the pivot of Terminator 2. In theory, this is a great idea. AMELIA, an icy Ivanna Sakhno (and at times a dead ringer for Elizabeth Olsen), is a genuinely formidable presence--a T–1000–style foil who should have supercharged the film's thrills. And to its credit, the best action moments do involve her.

The execution here just doesn't land. Rather than embracing a hunter-versus-protector dynamic with AMELIA on a relentless rampage and M3GAN forced to protect those she once endangered, the film bogs down in heavy exposition about AI ethics, corporate sabotage, and technological singularity. The dialogue in the final act especially is weighed down by info-dumping that chokes out any tension or momentum. You keep waiting for it all to build toward something fantastical — or at least meme-worthy — but it never arrives.

It's particularly frustrating that M3GAN 2.0 is so restrained in terms of gore or kills. If you thought the PG-13 rating on the first film was too soft, this one is no different, with a minimal kill count and uninspired violence. The bigger budget and expanded scope surprisingly fail to deliver anything more visceral. Some of this might be due to editing choices: action scenes are choppy and over-reliant on quick cuts and shaky camera work, possibly trimming back R-rated material to stay PG-13, similar to the original's later unrated cut. It's speculative, but it would explain why so many of the fights feel chopped up and lack any real impact.

One sequence involving a winged suit seemed ripe to recapture the silly, viral energy by presenting a Mission: Impossible-level stunt performed by an AI doll. However, the visual effects on the jump look painfully cheap and detract more from the thrills than add to them. A handful of other moments — a brief dance, a Kate Bush song, and a couple of snarky lines — do at least attempt to tilt the film into memeable greatness. Still, they feel much more forced, as if inserted by a studio checklist rather than naturally woven into the narrative. Truthfully, the only reason these moments got a reaction was the energy of a packed audience. Alone on streaming, I probably would have fallen asleep before the third act. Even at just over 100 minutes, M3GAN 2.0 feels weirdly long, stretching its midsection until any momentum evaporates.

It's a shame that M3GAN herself feels so sidelined in her own sequel. For much of the runtime, she is reduced to a disembodied voice, more Alexa than killer doll. When she finally regains a physical form, she's shackled with new "morality" protocols that strip away her sense of danger. The film is left without a satisfying monster: AMELIA, who could have been a truly terrifying villain, is kept too restrained to feel genuinely threatening. There are simply no stakes or sense of peril, and that robs the sequel of any tension.

Ultimately, M3GAN 2.0 feels at war with itself: eager to expand its lore, shift genres, and explore bigger sci-fi ideas, but unwilling or unable to hold onto what made the first movie so effective — the campy horror, the cheeky sense of humor, the sense of real danger. I walked in with modest expectations but still left disappointed. If there is a M3GAN 3.0 in development, I hope the creative team remembers what made her so memorable in the first place: a killer smile, a twisted sense of humor, and the willingness to get those synthetic hands a bit bloody.