The Model 3 Generative Android, often known as “M3GAN,” is the most recent in a long line of humanoid creatures that wish to hurt humanity. It serves as the creepy star of Gerard Johnstone’s thriller of the same name. Science-based inventions, robots, evil dolls, and other monstrosities bearing a grudge against their flesh-and-blood counterparts have a long history in horror and science fiction. Examples include “Frankenstein,” “The Terminator,” “Child’s Play,” and “Splice,” among others.
Why are these monsters that resemble people so memorable haunting? According to Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley theory, which was published in Popular Mechanics, items that look and, more importantly, behave like people set off the same “psychological alarms” in our brains as seeing a person who is either dead or on the verge of passing away. We react with revulsion and terror more strongly the more human-like the robot, dummy, or man-made monster acts, or in the case of M3GAN, the more expertly it dances.
These two reactions are not an indication of revulsion or fright, but rather the mark of quality for many horror enthusiasts. Therefore, read this spoiler-filled list of 14 more spooky movies that horror lovers should watch if you liked “M3GHAN” and want to see more evil automatons, demonic dolls, or technology gone awry.
Annabelle
Producer of “M3GAN” for Warner Bros. Pictures James Wan and Atomic Monster Productions Another childlike monster created by shingle is Annabelle, who made her screen debut in 2013’s “The Conjuring” and went on to star in her own three-film series from 2014 to 2019. Unlike M3GAN, Annabelle is a very different kind of monster. It is a toy doll that is controlled by a demonic spirit by the name of Malthus, and it makes an effort to take the souls of anybody who comes into contact with it.
The “Annabelle” movies adhere to the conventions of supernatural horror, relying largely on clichés associated with haunted houses, such as shadows, disembodied voices, and strange noises. She nevertheless strikes many of the same frightening notes as “M3GAN,” especially in regards to her appearance. Both M3GAN and Annabelle have a childlike appearance, and an innocent one at that. While M3GAN has the outfit of a very sophisticated and fashion-conscious preteen, Annabelle is made to resemble a young girl with rosy cheeks wearing a 19th-century frock. A big part of what makes them terrifying is how disarming they look; such sweet, well-put-together things couldn’t desire to kill and main, could they?
In the contest of who wears their wicked intent best, M3GAN appears to prevail.
By the end of the movie, she still has that first-day-of-school glow (until she runs into Bruce, that is), whereas Annabelle gets older and more haggard with every grisly act she commits.
Bigbug
M3GAN’s main goal before she went crazy was to protect and be a friend to Violet McGraw when her parents passed away. Robots in the Netflix film “Bigbug” by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet perform a wider range of tasks, including as cleaning the house and performing sexual acts. The bots in one dysfunctional household take owner Alice (Elsa Zylberstein) and her family as virtual prisoners in their homes when an aggressive form of AI called the Yonyx decides to subjugate humankind. This is done for their own good, but it turns out to have the exact opposite effect on the occupants.
The events in “Bigbug” unfold with a blend of humour and creepiness, just as in Jeunet’s other movies, which include “Amélie,” “Alien Resurrection,” and “The City of Lost Children.” The Yonyx (Francois Levental), which resemble a less slick version of the Borg but possess a pure hate for humanity that displays itself in the brutal punishment of prisoners, deal with the former to a significant extent. The robots themselves, which are brought to life with a remarkable array of practical effects and exaggerated human performers, as well as Jeunet’s broadly comedic criticism of consumer culture and automation, provide a counterbalance to these scenes.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Colossus, the defensive system that pushes humanity to the verge of extinction in the 1970 film “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” is a disturbing illustration of how technology meant to make our lives easier may really make things more complicated. It initially appears to be a model for WOPR, the enormous supercomputer that almost starts World War 3 in “WarGames.” Colossus learns that ultimate human dominance is the only way to bring about world peace, in contrast to WOPR, who eventually learns that nuclear conflict has no winner.
Colossus, the unbreakable creation of Dr. Charles Forbin (played by renowned soap actor Eric Braeden), was created to control nuclear bombs used by American and Allied forces. Colossus, however, overrides control of the missiles after connecting with its Soviet counterpart, Guardian, and gives humanity the option of “the peace of plenty and content, or the peace of unburied death.”
Colossus expects complete loyalty, and it emphasises this point by instantly killing thousands of people. Colossus eventually starts to think of itself as a god in addition to a defender. It murmurs in a robotic voice, “In time, you will come to treat me not only with respect and wonder, but with affection.” Never!” Forbin responds, but what he intends to sound like heroic conviction actually sounds like absolute panic.
Dead of Night
The 1945 British anthology “Dead of Night” has a major place as one of the first and scariest movies to include this unsettling figure if there is a top 10 list of evil dolls in horror cinema. Although “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy,” the concluding scene in “Dead of Night,” was first seen on screen in the 1929 drama “The Great Gabbo,” which starred actor and director Erich von Stroheim as a ventriloquist with an unhealthy relationship to his dummy, it has had a greater impact. The segment by Brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti, starring Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist who begins to think that his dummy, Hugo, has a life of its own, has influenced episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Simpsons,” and movies ranging from “Magic” to “Goosebumps.”
Despite the fact that so many media has used “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy,” its most shocking moments, the piece still sends shivers down viewers’ spines. Redgrave portrays a ventriloquist who thinks his dummy, Hugo, is trying to take over his life in a very terrifying performance. Whether the dummy’s schemes are real or the result of Redgrave’s increasingly agitated mind is strangely unclear, but they finally lead him to try to murder an American rival. Even the most ardent horror fan cannot dispute that the last scene, in which Redgrave appears to be possessed by Hugo, retains the ability to create a chill even after 70 years. Scenes of Hugo jabbering threats to Redgrave may be simple to dismiss.
Deadly Friend
In “Deadly Friend,” Kristy Swanson—the original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”—played a totally different kind of undead character. In the 1986 Wes Craven thriller, Matthew Laborteaux played a young genius who utilises an AI microchip from his research robot to revive Samantha Swanson’s character after her violent father kills her. However, the reborn Swanson is more intent on exacting brutal vengeance on anybody who has wronged her in the past than she is in continuing their love.
Swanson’s corpse-bot, who has black-rimmed eyes and pale skin, is undoubtedly the best part of “Deadly Friend” and at times seems to have the same insatiable desire to kill as M3GAN. The most outlandish of Craven’s gory setpieces is a sequence in which Swanson uses a basketball to decapitate a cranky neighbour (Anne Ramsey).
The rest of the film, which is unfortunately more akin to a high school drama-romance with nice elements like the aforementioned robot, clashes terribly with these parts. That was the movie that director Wes Craven and writer Bruce Joel Rubin wanted to make, but Warner Bros., the company that distributed the movie, anticipated something more bloodier, more in the vein of Craven’s 1984 horror blockbuster “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” Rubin stated, “The studio urged me to give them six more sequences, each bloodier than the last… that absolutely wrecked our love story,” in an interview from 1990 that can be seen in “Wes Craven: The Art of Horror.”
Demon Seed
The artificial intelligence known as Proteus was problematic nearly right on in the 1977 film “Demon Seed.” Proteus IV is a machine designed by scientist Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) to assist people with issues such as home maintenance and mining for valuable metals. However, Proteus IV instead uses its infinite knowledge to help Weaver’s wife, Susan, conceive a child (Julie Christie). A humanoid child born as a result of their horrible union has Proteus’ ominous voice and is initially clad in metallic scales (voiced by an uncredited Robert Vaughn).
The movie “Demon Seed,” which was based on a Dean Koontz novel from 1973, was a strong, albeit slightly gory, portrayal of the “robot overlord” scenario, in which technology turned on and overcame its creators. Susan, who is tormented and enslaved by Proteus at every turn, is not going to win any humanitarian awards in director Donald Cammell’s portrayal of an artificial intelligence that views mankind as lab animals. It’s difficult to shake, though, as a nightmare dream of the most horrible human-tech interface.
Ex Machina
Both the 2014 Oscar-winning film “Ex Machina” and the Universal Pictures “M3GAN” feature a female-appearing artificial intelligence that deviates from its core objectives, with terrible results for the people nearby. However, the inspiration behind their conception and the causes of their ensuing deeds are totally different. Since roboticist Gemma built the Model 3 Generative Android with the goal of helping her niece Cady after her parents passed away, M3GAN is essentially the result of good intentions. The Turing Test was an experiment developed by mathematician Alan Turing to ascertain if a machine can think or act like a person. In the movie “Ex Machina,” the “gynoid” Ava (Alicia Vikander) is apparently built by Oscar Isaac’s sociopath CEO Nathan Bateman to pass the Turing Test.
The majority of M3GAN’s damaging activity is the result of a programming fault. Gemma wanted Cady to be safe from all harm, but she didn’t realise that a binary system could view any conflict as a direct threat that required total neutralisation. Ava, however, has not misunderstood anything. At the film’s conclusion, when she is about to be destroyed by Bateman (who, it is implied, has been sexually abusing her), she manipulates Caleb, played by Domhnall Gleeson, into helping her escape using her instinctive knowledge of human nature. For good measure, she also kills Bateman, giving a definitive answer to how she passed the Turing Test.
Kimi
In Steven Soderbergh’s 2022 movie “Kimi,” there is a distinct kind of technology fear at play. Here, our concerns are rooted in the notion that the unrestricted access to our private lives that we give to teachers will someway be used against us. In “Kimi,” a virtual assistant records every move we make, including a violent one that puts its creator’s employee Angela (Zo Kravitz) in grave jeopardy. However, in “Kimi,” technology isn’t truly the bad guy; rather, it serves as a means for evildoers to carry out their schemes without getting their hands dirty.
“Kimi” toy with themes and concepts from other thriller and science-fiction movies. In movies like “The Circle” and “Eagle Eye,” there is the fear of continuously being watched, as well as the unintentional recording of a murder in suspense classics like “The Conversation” and “Blow Out.” Soderbergh changes the dynamic by physically and psychologically isolating Angela. She has agoraphobia as a result of a physical assault, and the COVID-19 epidemic has further cut her off from the outside world. When her employer learns that she has recordings of its CEO abusing his mistress, both render her utterly powerless. The programme in “Kimi” gives Kravitz a lifeline and a way to empower herself as the company’s goons close in, in contrast to many other computer thrillers.
Magic
By virtue of appearance alone, Fats, the dummy in Richard Attenborough’s 1978 chiller “Magic,” likewise rises to the top of the scary movie doll roster. Fats resembles a nasty parody of his owner/partner Corky thanks to his abnormally enormous head (even for a ventriloquist’s dummy), finely chiselled features, and a massive set of upper teeth (Anthony Hopkins). The design is fitting given that the plot of the Oscar-winning screenplay by William Goldman, who adapted his own novel, argues that the dummy represents the disturbed side of Corky’s split personality and wants to seize control of the other half even if it means committing a few murders.
Horror fans could feel that Attenborough and Goldman rely too heavily on such ideas in “Magic,” particularly in the film’s climactic scene where the performer and the dummy appear to resolve their power struggle once and for all. In order to highlight the relationship between Hopkins and Ann-Margret Olsson, who played his high school flame, Peggy Ann, the movie was particularly characterised as “a terrible love story,” which fits with their aspirations for it. However, the presence of Corky alone more than makes up for any lack of chills, as does a tense scene in which Burgess Meredith, as Hopkins’ flinty agent, pays a heavy price for betraying his client.
Morgan
The tagline of the one-sheet for the Ridley Scott-produced 2016 movie “Morgan,” which incorporated a being made with synthetic DNA into its artificial intelligence horror thriller, warning, “Don’t let it out.” Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy), a genetically modified being with the appearance of a highly intellectual teenager but the emotional IQ and temper of a five-year-old, is the result of the two research coming together. The firm that developed Morgan sends risk management specialist Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) to determine whether their experiment has generated a new form of life or a coldly clever murderer when that fury results in the wounding of scientist Dr. Kathy Grieff (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Taylor-natural Joy’s (and frequently unsettling) calmness in her performances is ideal for Morgan, who alternates between speaking with girlish delight about a nearby lake and ruthlessly slaughtering a research team. The acting is wildly inconsistent (Leigh is stuck in a supporting role while Paul Giamatti chews whole pieces of scenery as a confrontational scientist) and the twist ending leaves more questions than answers in “Morgan,” but Taylor-Joy expertly captures our anxieties about technology’s ability to both help and kill.
The Boy
The 2016 movie “The Boy” centres around an undeniably frightening doll, however this is actually a bit of a bait-and-switch on the part of the director William Brent Bell and writer Stacey Menear. The Heelshires, an old British couple who lost their son, also named Brahms, in a fire, present American nanny Greta (Lauren Cohan) with Brahms, a child-sized, porcelain-faced doll, as a sort of surrogate child. Cohan is persuaded by the doll’s apparent ability to move independently that it harbours the Heelshires’ son’s soul. But when her violent lover shows up, putting that theory to rest, the true, much worse source of the paranormal phenomenon appears.
Although “The Boy” is more of a hide-in-the-house horror film, it is nonetheless important to discuss in the context of films about malevolent dolls. The appearance of the real Brahms, an adult psychopath who conceals his deformities beneath a matching mask, surpasses the presence of the small Brahms with his pale, cherubic face and undertaker’s garb. In Bell’s 2018 follow-up, “Brahms: The Boy II,” Brahms’ past was given a more paranormal bent.
Uncanny
A reporter named Lucy Griffiths (Joy Andrews) investigates the enigmatic research facility of bright but uncomfortable scientist Mark Webber in the independent film “Uncanny” from 2015. (David Kressen). Tech CEO Castle (Rainn Wilson) has hired Webber to develop Adam (David Clayton Rogers), an artificial intelligence that can pass for a real person. Griffiths’ presence shatters the lab’s atmosphere of pure science and stirs up Webber’s long-dormant emotional side, which in turn causes something analogous—but far more concerning—to happen in Adam.
Uncanny’s storyline similarities to the more expensive and well-known “Ex Machina” are undeniable, but Matthew Leutwyler’s movie shouldn’t be mistaken for a straightforward replica. It’s undoubtedly a cooler and more intellectual effort with less interest in the skeevy sexual politics or violence seen at the end of Alex Garland’s picture. Dialogue is prioritised above visual effects, though there is also an astonishing amount of production design available. In its closing third, it also pulls off two striking twists, one of which tantalisingly leaves the audience in suspense as to how it will turn out.
Vivarium
The technology behind the unusual events in 2019’s “Vivarium” is not totally obvious, but it unquestionably has a very detrimental impact on the lives of reluctant new homeowners and parents Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots). In his immensely unsettling film, director Lorcan Finnegan leaves hints as to who or what is behind Yonder, the bizarre development community where Eisenberg and Poots get stuck and subsequently have to raise a strange boy.
At first glance, everything in the housing complex appears to be normal, but closer inspection reveals it to be false. Even the earth they tread on is pliable and leads to horrific parallel universes, the food looks good but tastes awful, and the sky’s clouds are strangely perfect and motionless. In a few months, their “son” develops from an infant to a man and displays terrifyingly alien behaviours including speaking in an adult voice, crawling on all fours, and inflating air sacs in its throat. Their “son” comes in a strange box outside of their home.
The horrors in “Vivarium” are less tangible than those in “M3GAN”; she is the result of scientific experimentation gone wrong, but the technology on exhibit in Yonder is sophisticated and defies the laws of reality. It goes beyond basic technology fear and into the realm of a living nightmare with its ostensibly endless ability to ensnare and oppress anyone unlucky enough to trespass within its bounds.
Westworld
Science fiction of the 1970s included several hazardous robots that might have been the forerunners of M3GAN. The neutralisation of humans was a common feature of artificial intelligence, as seen in a number of movies from that era. To mention a few, there was Box in “Logan’s Run,” the suburban women of “The Stepford Wives,” Ash in “Alien,” the coolly destructive supercomputers of “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” and “Demon Seed.” The Gunslinger from Michael Crichton’s “Westworld,” the movie that eventually served as the inspiration for the HBO series, became one of the most recognisable killer robots in sci-fi history during this time period.
One of three attractions of Delos, a technologically advanced amusement park, is Western World, which includes The Gunslinger. Customers can indulge in fantasies with lifelike robots at the theme park, including the option to shoot it out with a famed gunfighter. Although Chris Adams, the commander of “The Magnificent Seven,” is never specifically acknowledged, the Gunslinger is meant to resemble him, and Yul Brynner, who performed both roles, is a commanding presence when the Gunslinger is acting in accordance with procedure.
Brynner’s Gunslinger transforms into a true killing machine that cannot divert from its core objective of drawing on park visitors, which leads in their deaths, when the park’s bots malfunction and go on a rampage. Our anxieties about technology working too well—that it lacks the ability to quit performing flawlessly, even when those functions result in death—are stoked by The Gunslinger.
