How A.I. Abolishes the Family

The campy slasher romp M3gan, released in January, is the latest entry in the toy-horror lineage of Child’s Play and The Conjuring. However, it updates the murderous doll motif for the age of artificial intelligence: The titular M3gan (Model 3 Generative Android) isn’t possessed, as with Chucky and Anabelle, by the soul of a Satanist serial killer, but by the internet; more precisely, by machine-learning algorithms that process vast troves of online data, ultimately prompting her to commit murder.