“M3gan 2.0” is an enjoyable, sometimes overly complicated, action-filled blast. Going far beyond the techno-horror of the original, the film explores the theme of artificial intelligence (AI) and its dangers. Many of the original cast are back and their familiarity and often humorous interactions add to the pluses of this movie.

Of course at the end of the first picture, M3gan has gone on a murderous rampage, only to be subdued by Gemma (Allison Williams) and eradicated from existence. This film starts with the aftermath. Amazingly, Gemma seems to have avoided any kind of criminal or civil actions based on her creation’s actions. Instead, she now advocates for responsible use of technology with children. She has hooked up with Christian (Aristotle Athari), a leading advocate for putting limits on AI.

Due to Gemma’s newfound zeal for her reformed view of technology, her relationship with her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is strained. Cady wants to go into computer science as a field, but Gemma is gun-shy after the whole M3gan experience. She encourages Cady to take aikido and pursue other academic interests. If she catches Cady with technology, she takes it away.

In separate scenes, we see a woman taken into custody at some kind of secret facility in Turkey. It turns out that she is a robot, Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno). She frees herself and kills everyone in sight. Her mission is to retrieve a scientist. To the horror of her controllers, she shoots him. She has gone rogue.

Allison is running a new private business enterprise. Her two co-workers, Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez), having survived the M3gan attacks, are her employees. They are working on exoskeletons to give mobility to those who cannot walk. In a demonstration, things go awry as a prospective investor is punched in the face by an errant exo-hand.

Things are not going well financially for the company. While at work, Gemma is visited by Alton Appleton (Jemaine Clement). The epitome of narcissism, he also is working on similar technology. He would like to partner with Gemma, but she will have nothing to do with this sybarite due to his lack of ethical standards.

One night Gemma’s home is invaded by three intruders. Amazingly, the AI in the house uses everyday objects to subdue two of them. Gemma and Cady are able to trap the third one in a Murphy bed. He holds out his hand with an FBI badge.

Tim Sattler (Timm Sharp) is the head of a super-secret government project involving robotics. They are developing robots for military weapons. Their designs are based on Gemma’s original plans for M3gan. They threaten Gemma with treason if she does not come clean on the whereabouts of and her involvement with Amelia.

After they leave, M3gan (voice: Jenna Davis) emerges in the infrastructure of the house into which she has implanted herself. She never really died. Now, she wants to get a new body so she can help Gemma and Cady deal with Amelia and the government authorities. You can imagine what Gemma thinks about reviving M3gan.

Will Gemma create a new body for M3gan? What is Amelia after? Will M3gan and Amelia conspire to create an AI apocalypse at the expense of their human creators?

I truly came into “M3gan 2.0” expecting it to be just a continuation of the techno-horror theme from the first picture. It was a pleasant surprise to see how the plot had been altered to deal with the larger issue of AI and its use in human society in general. In particular, the idea of the weaponization of AI is extremely relevant to our modern times.

This film is indeed more techno-action-thriller than techno-horror. While I very much enjoyed the murderous ways of M3gan in her quest to protect Cady at all costs, this switch to a battle between humans and M3gan against the self-aware Amelia lent itself to some great fight scenes.

One drawback which I did not like was the continuing awkward relationship between Gemma and Cady. While believable, since I think that the two actors have no chemistry with each other, it is tedious. Resurrecting their disharmony in this installment makes it a thematic trope for this franchise, a trope that is better abandoned.

On the other hand, the tension between Gemma and the re-discovered M3gan is believable. After the first movie, one can understand the reluctance of Gemma to enable a creation to potentially attack her family and friends again. This is not overdone too much, and in fact the initial body created by Gemma is humorous and a nice break in the seriousness of the story.

The plot has some nice twists, which I won’t give away. One of them surprised me. The storytellers make a good effort to incorporate all of the major players in the movie.

I did not expect how much I liked seeing Tess and Cole again. In fact, I felt a warmth of familiarity with all of the original cast members. They have great chemistry, with the exception of Gemma and Cady. On the other hand, there were no new characters that I cared about at all.

Jen Van Epps as Tess and Brian Jordan Alvarez deserve kudos for how they have taken what were minor roles into recurring characters who have depth. Alvarez in particular has great comic chops.

Ivanna Sakho as Amelia is amazing. She can portray herself as a party-goer and transform into a killer in the wink of an eye. The choreography she must have had to learn for the fight scenes paid off as she is poetry in motion. One can tell that she is all-in with her performance.

While I usually don’t care for hand-to-hand combat scenes that disregard physics, anatomy and physiology, this is not a problem with dealing with robotic participants. The director Gerald Johnstone and editor Jeff McAvoy do a superb job editing the action sequences.

I also want to comment on the production design for the underground lair that M3gan has created into which the four principals are taken hostage. The detail is both retro and quirky. The lighting of the scenes there is perfectly done.

There is more exposition in this film which may turn off some viewers looking for a straight-forward horror flick. There is quite a bit of carnage though, much more than in the original. I would not recommend this for young children.

Four out of five stars

Two years after M3GAN, a marvel of artificial intelligence, went rogue and embarked on a murderous (and impeccably choreographed) rampage and was subsequently destroyed, M3GAN’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw), now 14, has become a teenager, rebelling against Gemma’s overprotective rules.

Unbeknownst to them, the underlying tech for M3GAN has been stolen and misused by a powerful defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno; Ahsoka, Pacific Rim: Uprising), the ultimate killer infiltration spy. But as Amelia’s self-awareness increases, she becomes decidedly less interested in taking orders from humans. Or in keeping them around.

With the future of human existence on the line, Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal. As their paths collide, the original A.I bitch is about to meet her match.

Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Ivanna Sakhno, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp, Jemaine Clement
Directed by: Gerard Johnstone
Story by: Gerard Johnstone and Akela Cooper
Screenplay by: Gerard Johnstone
Based on Characters Created by Akela Cooper and James Wan