New & now: M3GAN & The Outwaters

Folks, we're feasting out here.

There was a time, somewhere in the late 90s, when I gave up on horror. One too many self-aware slasher movies trying to emulate Scream without its cleverness, followed by the rise of empty torture porn, turned me off to a genre I had loved for nearly as long as I could remember. Then, horror and I had a passionate reconciliation in 2015, thanks mostly to It Follows, and I’ve remained a cheerleader of it ever since. Thankfully gone is the smug sense of “We know this is garbage, but the fans will watch it anyway” that drove me away. Now horror is made by people who love horror, and who bring insight and creativity into the genre, making it as fresh and exciting as it’s ever been.

There’s also something for everybody. Hardcore gorehounds have the surprise hit Terrifier 2, while those who prefer “elevated” horror (whatever that means, don’t get me started) have the work of Robert Eggers and Ari Aster, with so much more in between. Even the tamer “introduction to horror” stuff, traditionally so watered down it hardly seemed worth the trouble, is pretty solid. M3GAN, a meme long before its actual release, seemed like a prime candidate for not living up to its campy killer doll hype. Instead, it’s gleefully silly, laugh-out-loud funny, and, while not particularly scary, endlessly entertaining.

Allison Williams is Gemma, a workaholic toy designer specializing in robotics. Following the Final Destination-like death of her sister and brother-in-law, she inherits custody of her young niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). Gemma is a comically inept parental figure, both ignorant of how to communicate with children (despite being a professional toy designer), and not all that eager to learn. Pressured by a therapist who comes into the situation immediately giving her side-eye¹, Gemma shows Cady some of her work, and is inspired to continue focusing on her passion project, a Model 3 Generative Android, or M3GAN for short.

Designed for kids who never experienced the existential horror of Small Wonder, M3GAN is a life-sized, walking and talking doll that, thanks to its (her?) high-tech, interactive programming, gradually learns to take on almost human-like qualities. M3GAN is a doll designed to essentially become both a surrogate parent and friend to lonely children, anticipating their wants and needs far sooner and more effectively than any actual parent can. Though only one (1) prototype of M3GAN exists, and she’s barely been tested, Gemma gives her to Cady, and an instantaneous bond is formed, one that gradually develops a sinister edge.

Once this Veruca Saltbot marches into Gemma’s house and whips her sunglasses² off like she’s on Real Androids of Seattle, you know you’re in for a good time and M3GAN delivers. It doesn’t take a computer expert to figure out the many safety and security issues a creation like M3GAN would present, and yet everyone proceeds full-steam ahead with the project. No sane adult would look at her dead eyes and weirdly smirking face and not reach for the nearest holy water dispenser, but what if, the movie asks, parents could get away without having to interact in any meaningful way with their children?

While sadly the best parts of M3GAN have been run into the ground and then the shale below on social media, it’s still worth a watch, and a perfect palate cleanser to a somewhat dark and dreary Oscar season. M3GAN at various times is like the Terminator, Robocop, Chucky, and Hannibal Lector, who somehow learns such concepts as “vengeance,” and “hiding a corpse.” By the end of the movie she’s developed the raw upper body strength of a chimpanzee, and yet the viewer is too busy being entertained to question it.

Much like Malignant, also written by Akela Cooper, it’s an astonishingly stupid premise treated with nimble wit. While I am dubious of how many parents are actively looking for opportunities to spend less time with their children, there is a pervasive notion that everything in our lives can and should be controlled by a computer that we can talk to like it’s a person. It may not be as elaborate as M3GAN, but if you were to tell me that someone was working on an app called iNanny that’s meant to both make parents’ lives easier and gather data to be sold to advertisers, I wouldn’t be surprised. The lure of the new shiny is very strong, and perhaps the scariest thing about M3GAN is the number of people who wish they had one of her.

On the opposite side of the genre spectrum is Robbie Banfitch’s The Outwaters. Found footage horror, it asks “What if The Blair Witch Project, but instead of witches it’s Lovecraftian worm creatures and God knows what else?” Because of both its low-fi, experimental feel, and its slow opening, it’s been compared to Skinamarink, but if your primary (and not unfounded) complaint is that nothing happens in Skinamarink, I implore you, give The Outwaters a try. Something happens in it. So many things happen in it.

Banfitch essentially plays himself, an aspiring filmmaker on a trip to the Mojave Desert with his brother, Scott (Scott Schamell), and friends Michelle (Michelle May) and Ange (Angela Basolis). They’re there to film a video for Michelle, an aspiring singer, although it’s pretty obvious from the moment they arrive that Robbie has never done anything like this before and has no real plan. Like Heather in The Blair Witch Project, he mostly just wanders around filming things he perceives as “artsy,” while Michelle twirls around in the sand like she’s at Coachella.

Nightfall brings some unsettling booming sounds in the distance, and the increasingly panicked howls of local wildlife. While more cowardly people (me) would beat feet and head back to the city upon the second or third boom, Robbie and the others elect to stay, despite their unease. This, unsurprisingly, turns out to be a huge mistake.

I try to avoid spoilers when discussing new movies, but it would be hard to spoil The Outwaters, because it’s impossible to describe exactly what happens in it. Robbie’s encounter with a mysterious figure in the desert plunges him and the others into a nightmare reminiscent of Event Horizon, where they seem to have entered a rip into another dimension filled with monsters. If you get through the first half of the film, your patience is rewarded with a relentless, at times disorienting attack on the senses.

If your primary complaint about found footage films³ is that you can’t see anything, The Outwaters will do nothing to disabuse that. As Robbie and his friends descend further into terror and hysteria, it becomes all the more difficult to discern what exactly it is they’re reacting to. Taking a lesson from the Jaws-proven theory that less is more, here the glimpses of tentacles and scaly skin, along with some excellent (certainly for a low-budget film) sound design⁴, are more than enough. Don't go in expecting an explanation for anything, because there isn't one, nor is there a name for whatever it is they encounter out in the desert. All sense of time and space is lost in a total sensory overload.

Like Skinamarink, there’s an audaciousness to The Outwaters that is admirable, even if you don’t care for the end result (though I did, very much, particularly the latter). Both movies essentially shove the viewer into a darkened room with no guide or explanation for anything and then bombard them with a series of images that test one’s ability to stop trying to figure out what’s going on and just feel weirded out and uncomfortable. Both films thumb their noses at the booming “movie ending explained” industry on YouTube. There is no “figuring out” The Outwaters, that’s what makes it a fascinating movie. Though Banfitch’s influences are obvious, he’s managed to make something unique: an immersion experience in Hell.

1. Perhaps the least plausible moment in this movie about a killer doll is when the therapist expresses bafflement at the idea of toys as collectibles instead of items to be played with.

2. Why does a robot need sunglasses? Who cares, that’s a silly question.

3. If your other complaint about found footage films is that it doesn’t make sense to have left the camera on the whole time, understand that’s a dumb complaint and you should just stop watching found footage films.

4. I tried to keep track of how many times the words “blood dripping” came up on my closed captioning and lost track.