The trailer of the movie "Megan" (Tulip Media)
Star rating for movies - 2 stars (photo: image processing, .)
This coming weekend the world will mark Friday the 13th, the unofficial holiday of horror movies, and the genre will celebrate it with its box office status stronger than ever.
While Hollywood usually has a hard time convincing audiences that there is a good reason to get out of the house and see a movie on the big screen, the world of horror manages to do so, for several reasons.
Also because its main market share at the moment is teenagers, who also happen to be one of the only sectors that still bothers to go to theaters, and also because the boys and girls don't like watching horror movies in the living room.
They prefer to see them together with their friends - and scream together.
Another reason that is less talked about is that because of their flashy nature, these monsters are easy to market on social media, which as we know has become the most effective marketing tool these days.
And so, time after time, horror films become blockbusters.
The next hit is "Megan" ("M3GAN"), which came out last weekend and became a bigger blockbuster than expected with revenues of almost fifty million dollars, about four times its budget. It is not surprising that Universal Studios is already working on a sequel.
The film was directed by Gerard Johnston and wrote Akla Cooper, one of the rising stars of the genre, who won praise two years ago for "Malignant". This time she presents a kind of modern adaptation of "Child's Play", which transfers the murderous doll to the age of artificial intelligence.
"Child's play", the artificial intelligence generation.
From "Megan" (photo: Tulip Media)
The film is named after a doll, whose natural size and artificial intelligence make her look and sound like a real girl in everything - almost.
The person who develops it in the service of a huge corporation is a robotics engineer played by Alison Williams, who broke out in the series "Girls" and appeared about half a decade ago in the significant horror hit of our generation, "Escape".
The doll got stuck in the development phase, but then the engineer gets a chance to restart the project.
This happens under horrific circumstances: her sister and her partner die in a car accident, and she is required to give up her guardianship of her niece.
The orphan girl meets Megan's archetype at her aunt's house, and they instantly become best friends.
The proud aunt leverages this to prove to her employers the potential, and they are impressed by the brave company and realize that the doll is the next big thing, and it is worth investing huge resources in it.
But as usually happens in stories of this type, the golem rises up against its creator.
Megan is a good friend because of her dedication - unlike other humans these days, she is not self-absorbed or immersed in her iPhone.
She only cares about the girl next to her, and that's exactly the problem, because at some point her caring turns into a violent and even murderous obsession.
Amazing and surprising soundtrack.
From "Megan" (photo: Tulip Media)
Recently there have been horror hits whose success was both commercial and artistic.
"Black Pawn", for example, was a beautiful film, and "Smile" was truly masterful, and also creepy.
"Megan", unfortunately, is none of these things.
Horror films usually operate on relatively low budgets, which is another reason why the genre has managed to survive for so many years.
The best of them know how to overcome the scarcity of material in creative ways.
"Megan" does not.
Most of it takes place inside a warehouse, and it's clear throughout that the producers here invested little to make a lot - to their credit, according to the box office figures, it worked out for them.
On top of that, the film boasts some of the scariest supporting actors seen on screen in recent memory.
The things are said mainly about those who play the colleagues of the engineer, and we will not mention their names here out of respect.
It is only said that it is difficult to contain their presence on the screen.
Another problem is the victims that the film chooses to abuse.
In horror movies there will always be a trail of corpses, that's understandable, but the trick is to shoot the arrows up, not down.
"Megan" is smart about the weak and abuses helpless targets, instead of using the doll's power to hurt bad people.
Of course, we won't reveal what exactly is happening, but we will note that her first victim is a dog.
Passes the test in a big way.
From "Megan" (photo: Tulip Media)
The biggest problem of all is that, relative to a movie about artificial intelligence, "Megan" turns out to be mindless.
In fact, it's not really a movie - but a meme factory.
His script consists of a long series of punch lines of the kind you later find on Facebook pages or Tik Tok accounts, as well as song and dance segments that seem to have been created to be a network phenomenon, and indeed they are sure to replace that scene from "Wednesday" in the viral dance scene slot of the moment .
This is the circle of life these days: Tik Tok uploads movie trailers at a stage where it is only allowed to reveal certain scenes from them, turns them into blockbusters, and then accepts them back when it is already possible to make spoilers, and upload additional clips.
Perfect harmony of nature.
As if we don't have enough problems, artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the biggest challenges of our time.
"Megan" could have said a lot of interesting things about this relevant challenge, but instead settles for punch
"Megan" could also have used his story to discuss another modern phenomenon: parents who rely on technological toys to do the work for them.
But even here, the script and its execution prefer to produce another "tearing" gif instead of meaningful content.
Sorry, what are horror movies for if not to gruesomely deal with our terrifying reality?
Well Mila, the main thing is that the trailer was successful.
A liberal view of marriage and a conservative view of motherhood.
From "Megan" (photo: Tulip Media)
Despite all this, the film has two virtues.
First of all, it has a wonderful soundtrack, electrifying, rhythmic and surprising, including for example Deadly Valentine by Charlotte Ginzburg - the last artist I expected to find a song of hers in such a film.
Another thing has to do with the Bechdel test, the famous scale that to pass it, a film has to feature two female characters who identify with the oil, and talk at least once about something other than men.
A small amount of films have passed this test throughout history, and even today it is not obvious, but "Megan" passes it in a big way.
Except for two or three scenes, there is almost always a character in the picture that is not a man, and men are never talked about in the film.
The engineer has no partner, no romantic love interest, nor does she seem to have any interest in it, and it's hard to blame her.
The few men around her are completely impersonal.
What's more, there's no need to rush and declare "Megan" as a progressive and daring film.
is a film full of contradictions that presents a liberal view of singleness and a conservative view of motherhood.
Ultimately, his message is that a woman cannot avoid being a mother.
If she doesn't raise children herself, her sister will die and leave her niece for custody, and if she tries to leave her care in the hands of a toy, then he will turn out to be a murderous doll and force her to take back the reins.
It is likely that most of the viewers of this hit are boys and girls, who win through it to understand what Hollywood expects them to do when they grow up.
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