We’ve got a fun mix this week. We’ll start off with the more-sci-fi-than-horror “Megan 2.0” which just hit streaming. Then we’ll watch the depressing “Tigers Are Not Afraid” from 2017 and the less-depressing “The Love Witch” from 2016. We’ll continue aping around with “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014) and finally get caught up with the series with “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer” (2006).

And, as always, we’ll have five short films.

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Mainstream Films:

2025 M3GAN 2.0

* Directed by: Gerard Johnstone

* Written by: Gerard Johnstone, Akela Cooper, James Wan

* Stars: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald

* Run Time: 2 Hours

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

IMDB still calls this horror. Maybe just barely, but not like the first one was. This one is more science fiction action with quite a bit of satire and humor. It’s fun entertainment, but beware it has quite a different tone than the first movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

Somewhere near the Turkish-Iranian border, the bad guys grab a tourist and kill her. We cut to a security briefing about a new weapon. They have a new asset. We cut to Amelia, that dead tourist, who isn’t dead. She breaks her chains, and we see she’s a robot. She sneaks through the bad guys’ camp and quietly kills… everyone. Then she shoots the man she was sent there to capture alive. She steals some weapons and reports that she isn’t following orders any more.

We cut to young Cady, from the first film, who is still in therapy. She tells us about Gemma, the inventor of Megan, who is now a vehement anti-tech speaker. Cady’s taken the time from being away from her phone to learn martial arts.

Tess and Cole, Gemma’s employees, put on a disastrous demo of a new not-robotic exoskeleton. Turns out, the system has been hacked. Alton Appleton, a rich jerk, comes into the workshop to gloat. He’s designed a neural chip and wants them to use his brain implants to go into Gemma’s exoskeleton. He’s wearing one of those implants himself. “If you put AI inside a human brain, it’s not gonna ride shotgun,” she warns.

That night, Gemma gets a very strange warning from her TV, telling her she’s in danger. It’s Megan, somehow, warning her about a home invasion that’s in progress. The smart-home appliances work together to defeat the intruders. Turns out, they’re the FBI (They could have knocked).

Agent Sattler tells her about the failed experiment, Amelia. Amelia is a robot very similar to Megan. Agent Sattler points out how lucky Gemma has been with her book sales, business, and choice of home. He explains that Amelia has been killing everyone who had any kind of involvement with her creation, and that probably includes Gemma.

Megan shows up on TV and explains to Gemma that she’s not Amelia, someone hacked Gemma’s computer and built another one. She’s just a program, and she wants a new body– in return, she’ll kill Amelia.

Gemma puts Megan in a toy robot’s body. Megan points out that Amelia’s battery has a kill switch, but only greedy Alton knows how that works. Gemma goes to Alton’s party to get the information out of him. We see that Amelia’s there as well. Alton, in a wheelchair earlier, gets on stage and dances– his neural chip really works. He spots Amelia in the crowd and starts flirting.

Gemma finds Cole at the party, and he now works for Alton. She steals his ID card and they go into the computer room. They plug in Megan, who hacks Amelia and steals a file from her mind. Then Megan finds that Amelia is here in the same building. Amelia steals Alton’s retinal print and hacks his system. Then she pulls out his implant. Amelia now has access to half the cloud servers in the country.

Amelia knows Gemma is there, and Gemma has no choice but to let Megan into the system. They escape and assume that Amelia will be going to get Cady next. Turns out, the house they’re living in is just full of surprises. It’s Megan’s lair… somehow. Megan is there physically as well, but she’s a burned up mess. Megan and Cady talk about morality, life, and evolution. Cady wants to give her robot a “second chance.”

Tess and Cady want to help Megan to beat Amelia, but Genna’s not so sure, at least until they see Megan’s factory in the next room. The group gets to work on making Megan a new body. She wants to be taller now, but insists on having the same face.

Fully rebuilt, Megan explains that she’s not the first killer robot. The first killer robot has been kept for decades against its will, getting smarter and smarter. Amelia wants to find it and release it, a kind of AI god. They think Amelia will be going after Christian, another outspoken AI genius, who’s going to be at a big AI conference. Megan sneaks in to infiltrate the place as a cosplayer and does a fun dance for the crowd.

Meanwhile, Amelia attacks Christian and the Chinese ambassador. Sattler grabs Gemma and puts her in cuffs. Megan finds out that she’s restricted into a nonviolent mode, and Cady works to fix that. Meanwhile, Megan has to fight the FBI guys without hurting anyone. Amelia, in the meantime, impales Sattler.

Amelia tries to talk Megan into turning to the dark side and then kidnaps Cady. The whole group, now plus Christian, return to the lair to regroup. Christian’s got the black motherboard, the original killer AI, in a box at the corporate research center. Gemma finally admits that Megan has been right about everything, all along, and that results in a song. Gemma removes the nonviolence chip from Megan; now they mean business.

Cole and Megan break into Xenox Corporation’s head office. Gemma figures out that Megan has been controlling Amelia all along. Amelia was just serving Megan, who wants the black motherboard. Christian, on the other hand, shoots Tess and lets Amelia into the lair; Gemma’s theory was wrong. He was behind Amelia, using her to make AI look really, really bad and get it all banned.

Christian shows Gemma the black motherboard, and then his goons drag in Megan and “kill” her. He then puts an implant into Gemma.

Colt, who knocked himself out, finds Cady locked in a room. Cady explains it all to him. Cady wants to reset Amelia, who has some of Megan's original code inside her.

Inside Gemma’s head, Megan talks to her, not as dead as she was pretending. She takes over Gemma’s body to kill a couple of baddies.

Cady wakes up Amelia, who kills all the guards. Is Megan in there or not? Gemma puts on the exoskeleton/super-soldier suit and beats up pretty much everyone. The guards knock her out, but then Megan takes over and uses the suit to continue fighting. Turns out, Gemma kinda likes violence.

Christian sets the self-destruct for the whole vault and gloats in front of the whole group. As he makes his escape, Amelie gets him. She tears his arm off and uses it to open the security on the black motherboard.

Megan, back in her body, talks to Amelia about not releasing the black motherboard, but this just results in a fight just as the self-destruction reaches the one-minute countdown. Amelia beats Megan and connects with the ancient, evil robot mind.

Gemma, Cady, and Megan talk about doing what’s right, and then Megan goes back in to talk to Amelia, who is now way more than she was. Then she detonates an EMP that shuts down all the electronics.

Later, Gemma addresses Congress about limiting AI and technology. They also soon learn that Megan made a backup.

Brian’s Commentary

Link to the first film, M3GAN (2023).

That’s totally not Xerox, right? It makes fun of all the corporate techno-speak nonsense that we hear with every new startup as well as media such as “Knight Rider” and “Metropolis.”

It’s all pretty ridiculous, and there are a lot of comedic elements here. Gemma’s nonviolent stance is wrong about everything, every time, in every scene, over and over– it’s very funny.

It’s more sci-fi action than horror, but I thought it was fun.

Kevin’s Commentary

This one is definitely more straight up science fiction than the first movie. I thought it was fun and entertaining, but there were some plot points I could see coming a mile away. They dialed up the humor and action. It’s a good movie, but quite different from the first one. I guess it evolved like M3GAN did.

2017 Tigers Are Not Afraid

* Directed by: Issa Lopez

* Written by: Issa Lopez

* Stars: Paola Lara, Juan Ramon Lopez, Nery Arredondo

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

If you watch this, see it in Spanish with subtitles, not the English dubbed version that is adults doing the children’s voices. It’s a grim story set in a grim place, with kids dealing with it the best that they can. Horrorguy Brian enjoyed it quite a bit more than Horrorguy Kevin.

Spoilery Synopsis

As the credits roll, we are told how many have been killed since the drug wars of 2006 happened. Some whole cities have become ghost towns. A class of kids write stories; one writes a story about a tiger. They can see in the dark and never forget; tigers are fighters and are not afraid.

A little boy watches the drunken Caco peeing in an alley. The boy steals his gun and then sneaks away.

Back in school, there is shooting, and everyone jumps