From movie monster to horror icon, M3GAN could be the monstrous voice of a new generation.
New horror villains drop all the time, and compelling characters like "Malignant's"
Gabriel and "The Babadook's" titular entity show that filmmakers have no shortage of
imagination when it comes to creating visually impressive villains. Still,
apart from the Babadook's unlikely stint as a meme-worthy LGBTQ+ icon,
most horror monsters have a long way to go before they really reach the status of an "icon."
"Babadook dook DOOK"
"M3GAN," on the other hand, was a different beast from the point that the first trailer
dropped. When the film itself turned out to be even more entertaining than the doll's dance
moves in the promotional material, it was clear that Gen Z has received its first horror icon.
Megan the killer friend-bot is sassy, smart, funny, infinitely meme-able, and ... relatable,
somehow. What's more, her potential to become a genre mainstay is vast, and everyone involved
knows it. Universal was already interested in a "M3GAN" sequel before the movie premiered,
and after a successful $30 million debut, the age of "M3GAN" has officially just begun.
"You should probably run."
While murder clowns and axe killers are just as terrifying to younger generations
as they are to any other cohort of people, Gen Z is notably the first
truly digital generation that has never known a world without the internet. Thus,
your average Gen Zer is likely far more personally familiar with advanced technology than they are
with circuses or wood-cutting implements. Right away, that's a point for "M3GAN,"
whose horror and humor are technology-based. There's also the fact that the creepy doll's
very nature as a go-getter who values its loved ones and has an extremely practical,
though murderous, approach to problem-solving is quite close to Gen Z's core values.
Roberta Katz of Stanford University describes Gen Z thoughtfully,
"...a typical Gen Zer is a self-driver who deeply cares about others, strives for a
diverse community, is highly collaborative and social, values flexibility, relevance,
authenticity and non-hierarchical leadership, and, while dismayed about inherited issues like
climate change, has a pragmatic attitude about the work that has to be done to address those issues."
Of course, as Variety notes, a clever, shrewd marketing strategy that went hard at Tiktok
and Twitter memeability played a part in giving "M3GAN" its deserved horror queen
crown. Going viral has translated into both cultural status and box-office love.
It's almost certain that a torrent of imitators will attempt to recreate "M3GAN's" success with
their own takes on memeable, marketable horror that guns for viral attention in hopes of creating
horror icons of their own. Unfortunately, it's also pretty likely that things won't be that easy.
A horror icon like the M3gan robot is lightning in a bottle — rare and tough to replicate, even when
all the ingredients are clearly visible. Besides, since "M3GAN" will likely occupy the collective "
new horror icon" headspace for the immediate future, there's not much room for newcomers.
As such, it may be more interesting to view "M3GAN" as the spearhead of a general
horror trend that's been emerging in recent years and only seems to be growing stronger.
Horror has always been at its strongest when it draws from familiar experience,
and recent movies have been heavily inspired by experiences that are far more inherently
familiar to Gen Z than immortal machete men stalking summer camps can ever hope to be.
From "Candyman" to "Get Out," horror has always been excellent at tackling social and cultural
affairs. Now that more and more Gen Z filmmakers are hitting their horror stride, the focus has
simply shifted to what they know well, shedding the pre-online world of their predecessors in the
process. This will no doubt result in countless amazing horror films and icons in the future.