 Yes, she's a social media phenomenon, but what makes Megan different from her creepy dull counterparts? And was it possible for the movie to live up to the impossible hype that preceded it? I'm Matt Rogers and join me today as we take a look at how Megan took over the horror community and gave us exactly what we wanted. Now I'm bringing you weekly videos covering the best and worst of movies and television and delivering it straight to your subscription feed. To stay up to date and support the channel be sure to hit that like button, subscribe and ring that bell to not miss a single thing. Now with the bombardment of movie marketing we're exposed to in recent years, not only with trailers but ads, TV spots, PR posts and TikToks, I feel like the marketing team behind Megan knew what they needed to do to stand out. Which I guess all marketing teams aim to do, but seldom succeed in doing. It all started with this poster, which somehow told you exactly what this movie was going to be with just one image, an uncanny doll looking lovingly yet menacingly at the protagonist slightly out of shot. We know the premise, we've seen it before, but what if the producers of this movie knew what they had, which was a story that's done to death, but takes a left turn by introducing a familiar antagonist with a campy side, who can use the world around it to learn and work against you. But speaking of malicious entities using your information for bad, I am excited to partner with today's sponsor, Aura, an easy to use app that includes all the tools you'll need to stay safe online. Aura protects you from scammers and hackers by scanning the web and even the dark web where criminals sell stolen information, looking for your emails, passwords, social security numbers, whatever it may be, and quickly alerts you upon finding anything. 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Now back to the video. It wasn't until the first official trailer for Megan dropped that things started getting really crazy. Brands such as Bratz started making their own versions of Megan. Gorilla marketing resulted in real life actors playing Megan on the street and even making appearance on late night talk shows. It reminded me a bit of what they did recently with the horror movie Smile where they hired actors to just smile in public to market the film. These guys aren't the first to market a film like this, but you can't say it's not working. The highlight of the trailer was most definitely the hallway dance scene, which immediately became a TikTok trend spouting infinite free marketing for the film. I saw a lot of reaction channels get turned off by this dance in the trailer, saying that it just took the tension out of everything that came before it. But it's one of those things I think if you get it, you get it. And if you get it, this is the highlight of not just the trailer, but the movie. She had no reason to fortnight emote in the hallway before killing that guy, but lo and behold, a fun fact I discovered when researching this video is the composer of the score for this movie also composed songs for fortnight. Maybe another attempt from the marketing team to subconsciously target the younger demographic. Who knows? But this brings me to the concept of camp in horror, the cheesy aesthetic known for being over the top and ironic, something that's been lacking in recent times, if you ask me, at least being done right. But the horror dull trope was begging for something like this to come along. Chucky is a franchise known for flirting with the thin line between actual horror and cheesy horror. Exhibit A would be the new Chucky TV series. But what if we took this concept and pushed the camp levels to eleven? I'm talking a Taylor Swift song in a horror trailer, I'm talking Megan literally breaking into song on three occasions in the movie. There's a scene where Megan sings titanium as a lullaby to this poor child. Sure, some could see this as jarring, but like I was saying before, if you get it, you get it. But campiness aside, there were some genuinely funny moments sprinkled amongst the tensions, such as the opening toy commercial, hilarious, with a dash of social commentary regarding technology, specifically children's dependence on technology. A little bit on the nose, sure, but be serious, you didn't watch Megan for its take on philosophy. Let's talk about the kills, and spoilers I guess if you haven't yet seen it. James Wan of Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring and Annabelle fame executive produced this movie, and you can tell to some extent, not just because he knows how to do the creepy doll thing, but there's no cheap jump scares, only earned ones, as well as creative kills throughout. Now there wasn't any over the top kill, something that I have come to love, but I guess it was refreshing for Gore not to be the crutch of the movie. Don't get me wrong though, I would have loved for them to dial up the violence a notch. Shit doesn't have to be terrifying at two levels, but something extra wouldn't have gone astray. Something I thought would have been a great scene after Megan kills those guys in the elevator would be that she goes crazy and kills all the attendants of the launch after exiting the elevator, think the final massacre of James Wan's malignant. But I guess they wanted that PG-13 rating to maximize the bums in seats in the cinemas, especially after the movie marketing becoming a hit in the teenage demographic. The choice to do primarily practical effects rather than lean on CGI was another great choice. Again going back on what I was talking about before with the terrify and with Chucky, there's been a real resurgence in practical effects in the horror genre. Compare that to what they're doing with the superhero and action movie genre where all but everything is CG. It's not hard to see why we're trying to pull away from that. Megan could have easily been entirely CG, but look what they can do by just putting a mask and limb prosthetics on a live action actress. The end result is so much cleaner. As predictable as some aspects of the story were, there were some story choices that differed to what I expected. One being the little girl Katie not being the main character. Usually with these things it's from the kids perspective like they did with the Annabelle spinoffs and the Chucky movies including the child's play remake. Aunt Gemma was so much more interesting as a character, anti-social and sassy when she could have instead just been easily written as a cookie cutter voice of reason mother figure. Another great story choice was that the doll wasn't quote unquote corrupt and instead just learned. Learned until it became a ruthless machine able to identify the weaknesses of its enemies. Which leads me to the final boss fight. No good horror story is without a good boss fight in my opinion and for a PG-13 movie Megan delivered once again. With good old physical strength being the AI's undoing resulting in a satisfying kill to boot. Usually I'm hesitant for sequels but it's rare we get a great horror villain that we willingly allowed to take over our 4u pages. So why not a sequel or two and funnily enough news outlets have already confirmed there will be a Megan 2.0 which is set for release on January 17th 2025 with the lead actors and producers set to return so we haven't seen the last of her yet. The next one could be about variations of Megan. A little boy doll perhaps or a mass production of Megan once they quote unquote worked out the bugs. But what did you think of Megan? What do you want to see from a Megan sequel? I'd love to hear what you think so let me know, I'll be down there in the comments. You can also follow along with what I'm watching on Letterbox to use the name Matthew Rogers. But if you haven't already be sure to subscribe for weekly videos covering the best and worst of movies and television. If you subscribe during this video then welcome aboard and if you had a good time hanging out then spank that like button. This is Matt Rogers and that is all.