Horror Movie Flops of 2025

Remember, just because a film tanks at the box office doesn't mean it's a bad film (often poor marketing is to blame or 'serious film critics' just not getting genre work)!

Of course, on the other hand, there's also The Toxic Avenger.

M3GAN (2022)

After the tragic death of her parents in a road traffic accident, eight-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw), goes to live with her workaholic aunt, Gemma (Allison Williams), a robotics engineer at a leading toy company.

Gemma is not at all prepared to suddenly become a 'substitute mother', but quickly realises that a pet project of hers might be the solution: a cutting edge, AI-controlled 'companion doll' called the Model 3 Generation Android or M3GAN (played impressively by Amie Donald, and voiced by Jenna Davis).

M3GAN has been designed to bond to a child and learn from its environment.

While Cady's tragic backstory brings out M3GAN's protective side, this soon escalates into "over-protective" and she starts making sure that anyone that seems to threaten Cady won't do so for much longer.

All this is happening against a backdrop of the toy company racing to unveil the M3GAN before any of its competitors get wind of the doll's capabilities (while exploiting Cady's tragedy in its marketing to demonstrate the utility of their android in such difficult situations).

Picture Chucky from the 2019 iteration of Child's Play getting a Terminator-scale upgrade, assisted by a dash of Tony Stark's inventiveness.

Although it starts slowly, M3GAN soon ramps up the action and tension, tempering it with some laugh out loud moments of dark humour.

Perhaps not enough is made of the 'uncanny valley' factor of M3GAN's near-human appearance, but when it is addressed it leads to some very funny - and believable - reactions (such as the scene where the school teacher mistakes the android for a new pupil).

While the technology employed both on-screen - and behind the camera - to bring M3GAN to life is ultra-modern, there's a definite 1980s tang to the plot.

For instance, the ending seems rather abrupt and doesn't explore the consequences of M3GAN's actions, but still manages to slide in a sly nod towards a sequel (M3GAN 2.0 has already been greenlit for a 2025 release).

Sidestepping the potential for a finale involving mass slaughter and carnage, writer Akela Cooper and director Gerard Johnstone instead choose to make the climactic showdown more personal, with a satisfying resolution that was foreshadowed earlier in the 102-minute movie.

The film certainly has something to say on the possible dangers of an overreliance on technology in our lives, especially in the field of parenting, but it largely skates over this as an excuse for more "killer robot" action.

And I was there for the wonderful "killer robot" action.

Although it doesn't bring anything particularly new to the party, M3GAN is a fun, thrilling, and entertaining serving of sci-fi/horror that hits all the right slasher beats in a classic "cuckoo in the nest" scenario. 

The film's memorable and iconic lead certainly has the potential to spawn a fantastic franchise and I await with interest the many variations of a theme that will be entertaining us in the future (at least until the fiction of androids in everyone's home becomes a reality).