While the rest of the world was in Easter mode, Blumhouse hatched a deliciously blasphemous bit of counterprogramming the horror shingle is calling “Halfway to Halloween.” Basically, producer Jason Blum is capitalizing on fans’ year-round appetite for scary movies by putting three of the company’s biggest hits — “M3GAN,” “Annabelle” and “Ma” — back in theaters for one day apiece, six months removed from Halloween.
As I settled into my seat for the April 30 screening of “M3GAN” (the 2023 murder-doll thriller that ranks right up there with “Get Out” and “Glass” among the company’s top-grossing films), Blum appeared in a pre-recorded message on screen to compliment the halfway full room of horror movie die-hards for celebrating what he called “the most sacred of made-up holidays.”
With “M3GAN 2.0” scheduled for release this summer, I figured we might get an early tease of what’s to come in the sequel — or, if we were really lucky, a reward-the-faithful switcheroo, the way Ari Aster did by sneak-premiering “Beau Is Afraid” to Alamo Drafthouse audiences who thought they’d bought tickets to a fan screening of “Midsommar.”
Alas, this was a just straightforward re-release of the original PG-13 cut, with one enticing twist: Meta had picked “M3GAN” to launch the company’s new Movie Mate technology, wherein audiences are encouraged to use their smartphones to interact with a M3GAN-themed chatbot during the movie.
That’s basically my worst nightmare — but one that might potentially enhance what was to be my first viewing of a horror flick that directly engages with the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. So why not give it a try?
I bought a ticket for a seat in the back row, because even if “second screen” behavior was explicitly sanctioned, I didn’t want to annoy the people sitting around me with the light of my phone. Meanwhile, my position gave me a clear view of the entire audience … and guess what: No one else took out their devices during the film. Not once.
The pre-show segment was a different story. Trailers are my favorite part of going to the movies (and something film critics are deprived of at press screenings), but I get why people talk and text over them, looking for whatever form of distraction they can from the advertising we’re all obliged to sit through before the main attraction you paid to see. If you go to the movies often enough, you might see the same preview a dozen times.
No wonder audiences have taken to interacting with that corny Nicole Kidman promo AMC runs before each show. Right after Kidman delivered her “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this” line, a Blumhouse Halfway to Halloween slide popped up, instructing us to “DM #H2H to @M3GAN on Instagram to get started.” So I did. (From the look of things, two guys seated a few rows in front of me did too, although they had the good sense to put their phones away for the rest of the movie.)
The chatbot replied almost instantly, spitting out a robotic-sounding “hey, Peter! miss me? ofc you did. because ur my bestie,” along with instructions on how to proceed. Basically, it told me to click “switch me on” the moment I saw the Blumhouse logo, then “I’ll spill the tea about making my movi3 and tell u what rly happened while you watch.”
As anyone who follows my infrequent posts on X knows, I’m not exactly the world’s savviest social media user, and I goofed up almost immediately. The Blumhouse logo appeared right after that slide, so I texted “switch me on” to M3GAN, but the movie didn’t start for another two minutes.
First, we had to sit through Blum’s introduction and a corny message from Violet McGraw (the child actor who plays Cady in the film), a sizzle reel of upcoming Blumhouse releases (including “Black Phone 2” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”) and a self-promotional ad encouraging us to “get in The Van” (sign up for the Blumhouse newsletter). Only then did the Blumhouse logo M3GAN had meant come up, but by this point, the chatbot was already texting me behind-the-scenes info about Purrpetual Pets, the obnoxious virtual companions that serve as a precursor to M3GAN in the movie. “lol. i wonder how they named m3?” it asked.
Great, not only was this convo out of sync (with no way to fix it), but I found myself wondering: Was M3GAN really going to substitute threes for every E in our “3xchang3”? In fact, this wasn’t an exchange at all. You can text the M3GAN account anything you like, but it doesn’t reply. Instead, it just spits out pop quizzes and trivia according to some pre-timed script.
“Do you answer questions?” I asked.
Silence.
Then I started getting snarky, pinging M3GAN: “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of intelligence to this artificial intelligence.”
Silence.
Two minutes later, it “responded” with a question of its own: “do u know whose daughter stood in for Cady when they r packing up her things in her old house?” This thing isn’t smart enough to respond, except to preprogrammed multiple-choice options. In this case, the right answer was “Jason Blum.” Not very interesting, although this exchange taught me one fun fact: The girl’s name, which sounded like “Katie” when spoken, was spelled C-A-D-Y (you don’t learn that simply from watching).
I won’t bore you with the rest of the trivia M3GAN inflicted upon me over the next hour and a half. Instead, I invite you to try it for yourself, since it turns out you didn’t need to be in a theater to chat with M3GAN. You can do it now, at home. The bot isn’t actually AI, and it’s certainly not smart enough to detect where you are when you engage it, which means you can pop in the disc or stream “M3GAN” whenever or wherever you want, and text “#H2H” to that @M3GAN account on Instagram to experience the same frustrations I did there in the dark. (Just know that you can’t hit pause without disrupting the flow.)
It was around that first (and only) quiz question that I stopped paying close attention to my “second screen.” It was clearly annoying the woman sitting right next to me, who got up and moved to another seat, presumably to avoid the light from my phone. I wanted to apologize and explain to her that this was what we were all supposed to be doing … except, no one else was doing it.
Those two guys below me had the right idea, staying dark throughout the film, then pulling out their phones to back-read all the chatbot’s messages when the end credits appeared. Funny enough, I’d chosen to see the movie at the AMC Century City — over the Alamo Drafthouse, with their strict no-phones policy — since teenagers are constantly annoying me there by texting and talking during the movies. Just not this one.
I have a few theories about why this Meta Movie Mate experiment was such an epic fail (apart from the hunch that no one really wants to chat with M3GAN). First, audiences aren’t stupid, and they can sniff when something is just a big marketing gimmick. After texting with M3GAN for an hour and a half, “she” fed me more or less what I knew was coming all along: A sales pitch for “M3GAN 2.0” — “i promise it’s gonna be one wild ride … mwah!” — plus a prompt to be alerted about “system updates.” No, thank you.
The studio hadn’t done enough to explain the concept, which is just as well, since the M3GAN chatbot turned out to be the most basic version of the killer-robot character — less sophisticated than computer programs you may have engaged with back in the ’90s, spitting out canned responses to whatever prompt you gave it. That initial #H2H slide looked like countless others we’ve seen before movies, encouraging audiences to post their reactions to social media. As a society, we’ve learned to ignore such calls to action, and I doubt most of the people seeing “M3GAN” with me realized what they were “missing.”
More to the point, young people pull out their phones when they’re bored at the movies (or by whatever’s on the main screen at home). But “M3GAN” is actually a pretty fun watch, which means it diminishes the experience to be constantly checking in on your chatbot during key scenes. I’m a lot less surprised that the girls seated beside me during an AMC show of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” started texting 10 minutes in, since it’s a subtler, quieter movie for which their TikTok-conditioned brains likely weren’t calibrated.
It’s hard to say what applications Movie Mate might have in the future, as there are so many other better ways to deliver bonus material alongside a screening, from commentary tracks to pop-up trivia. The hype made it sound like I’d be getting an enhanced viewing experience, something more akin to augmented reality where my phone would bring added value to the movie. In fact, it was just an elaborate distraction — one that had likely cost the marketing department more than “M3GAN” earned that day in theaters.
Still, I’m glad I finally saw it. The movie’s kind of amazing, because it manages to convince you that M3GAN, the futuristic toy turned overprotective companion, has a mind of her own. As for this chatbot, I had one last thing to tell it: “g3t a lif3”
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