M3GAN 2.0 is an impressive sequel because of how thoroughly it avoids repeating the format of part 1.0. It’s not even the same genre – more straight up sci-fi thriller than killer doll horror – but it feels of a piece by having the same joyful sense of absurdity. I laughed at its audacity to open as a straight up action movie – imagine if CHILD’S PLAY 2 opened with the infiltration of a terrorist compound on the Turkish-Iranian border! U.S. Army Colonel Sattler (Timm Sharp, KING OF THE ANTS) watches remotely from a war room, bragging that his agent Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno, High Fidelity) is in fact a highly advanced android on loan to Saudia Arabia to skirt laws. But just as they’re celebrating a successful test run Amelia executes the scientist she’s supposed to capture, steals his biological weapons and turns off her tracking. She’s gone rogue.

Then we get an info dump on our part 1 characters, now living in fake San Francisco instead of fake Seattle. Gemma (Allison Williams, GET OUT), genius roboticist/flawed aunt whose artificially intelligent doll creation Megan went on a killing spree, has spun her infamy into a successful career as an author and AI regulation advocate in partnership with her new boyfriend, cybersecurity expert Christian Bradley (Aristotle Athari, featured player on SNL season 47). She still works with Tess (Jen Van Epps, 1 episode Power Rangers Dino Fury) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez, 80 FOR BRADY), but instead of electronic toys they’re trying to make useful and ethical things like an exo-skeleton for the disabled.

Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw, who is in DOCTOR SLEEP and now weirdly resembles Shelley Duvall) still has trouble making friends, but now she channels her frustrations into studying computer science and aikido, both of which will come into play, of course. They live in a fancy-ass smarthouse, which turns into a pretty great joke about movie characters living beyond their probable salaries. FIRST ACT SPOILER: Gemma doesn’t notice that the computer program that is Megan survived and manipulates her finances as part of her programming to protect Cady.

Megan reveals herself to Gemma via cell phone (voice of Jenna Davis, LISA FRANKENSTEIN) to warn that someone’s breaking into the house. The invaders turn out to be FBI agents who found evidence that Amelia’s creator based her partly on Gemma’s Megan designs. Since Amelia is now going around murdering anyone involved in her creation Gemma agrees to pull a T2 and turn former antagonist Megan against the powerful newer model. So there’s a totally different dynamic (though everyone worries about how much to trust Megan).

The real dangers of AI have zero to do with what’s depicted in the M3GAN mythos – in fact, the classic sci-fi trope of the sentient robot plays into the propaganda they need people to believe to sell their shitty world-ruining scam. But at least 2.0 properly portrays tech people as sleazy corrupt buffoons and good victims for killer robots. Gemma is pressured by sleazy billionaire investor Alton Appleton, and since he’s played by Jemaine Clement (AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER) you know things are gonna get ridiculous.

Athari is more subtle as Christian, who has just the right level of pretentiousness for it to be enjoyable that Cady, Tess and Cole clearly hate him without being impossible to believe that Gemma falls for his shtick. After (SPOILER) he makes a not-so-surprising heel turn he’s even better, still talking in such a gentle and faux-thoughtful voice that it almost doesn’t seem like he’s making evil speeches. Which is pretty much what you need to succeed in that world.

If you need some grounding, Amelia is a more straight forward villain, played for the creeps, not the laughs, and Sakhno is great at that. I already knew that because I love the Star Wars streaming show Ahsoka, where she plays the dark side apprentice Shin Hati (obviously pronounced Shin Hottie). That’s another role where she does lots of fighting and ice cold stares and is sinister as hell but hard not to like.

This is basically the same creative team as the first movie, but director Gerard Johnstone (HOUSEBOUND) has been upgraded to screenwriter. Part 1 writer Akela Cooper (HELL FEST, MALIGNANT) shares a story credit with him. I think they do a good job of putting different spins on anything that’s kind of a callback – it’s never just the same shit. There’s a standout funny scene that I realize is a variation on a part 1 favorite, but it’s so well timed and executed that it took me by surprise and had me in tears laughing (like the famous emoji, except not fascist).

I appreciate that although the trailer seemed like it pretty much gave you the whole story, that wasn’t the case at all. Some of those scenes are in a context I didn’t expect, there are plenty of silly reveals and twists, one of the jokes from the trailer is followed by a funnier one in the movie. And it’s a whole lot of movie. Megan is a very different kind of killer doll, but I feel like Chucky’s later film and television adventures set a precedent for veering off in ridiculous directions. The box office of this one so far seems to make further installments unlikely, so we’re lucky M3GAN didn’t fuck around trying to make a couple normal sequels first.

That’s a strength of 2.0 you don’t see in many sequels today: it doesn’t feel like they’re saving or setting up anything for future installments. It feels more like they made a list of every funny/cool thing that could happen in a sequel and tried to cram them all in. Megan takes on so many different forms: smart house, smart car, crude robo-skeleton, harmless talking toy, taller version of classic Megan (I’m guessing Amie Donald [Sweet Tooth], who plays her when she’s not an animatronic, got taller), convention cosplayer, flying squirrel suit action hero, and more. Come to think of it, it figures that a living toy would go all Jungle Tracker Batman on us.

Gemma is mostly reasonable this time, and I sorta missed her being a shitty aunt, but she too seems to have had a list of things that would be fun to do, including sharing a body with Megan and having UPGRADE-esque fight scenes. I like the part where she’s knocked unconscious but her body fights without her. (Stunt double: Shaney Greetham, AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER.) I saw some reviews with that dreaded complaint that it “doesn’t know what it wants to be.” Uh… it wants to be a funny sci-fi thriller with a couple pretty kick-ass fight scenes, even a car chase. All honorable objectives. Stunt coordinator Isaac Hamon returns from part 1; he has over a decade’s experience as a motion capture stunt coordinator for Weta, but before that he did stunts on more than 100 episodes of various Power Rangers shows. I respect that.

There’s also a running gag so specific to my interests that it felt like they released it on my birthday intentionally. Believe it or not RUNNING JOKE SPOILER there’s a bit about Cadi being really into Steven Seagal movies. Unfortunately it doesn’t lead to a Seagalogy product placement, but it does have a good pay off. If they decide to do part 3.0 as a crazy Millennium style DTV movie I’m available for Seagalogical consultation.