Megan 2.0

The creators of MEGAN 2.0 apparently decided early on to forget about horror and just go for something near "Batshit Crazy" territory for this unhinged sequel.

Giving them credit, I did laugh a lot more than I thought I would, but if you're coming in expecting Blumhouse scares, unplug those thoughts.

While you're at it, just unplug your brain. It's the only way you'll survive this goofy, overlong opus.

In what will be a surprise to no one who has ever seen a movie, the film opens with the military using a knockoff of Megan's android in the original film as a new super soldier named Amelia. Do you think she'll follow orders?

Things go awry in a fun battle/action scene and then we're subjected to about 40 boring and repetitive minutes with Megan's creator Gemma (Allison Williams) and her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) dealing with the past two years of press and scrutiny since the events of the first film, when Gemma's android creation Megan went on a murdering rampage.

In a dull twist that's hammered into oblivion, Gemma is now a staunch anti-tech crusader. Williams is so annoying in the role that she begins to sound like your great grandmother who won't use an ATM because "those newfangled doo-hickeys will steal my money!". It's a thankless role and a really dumb character. You can see her final act decisions and questionable character arc coming about 90 minutes ahead of time.

McGraw is much better in her role as the slightly older and much-wiser-than-her-aunt kid.

Even worse than Williams, in the role of a mortally dull tech wizard, is Aristole Athari, who has the screen presence of a shopping bag. I kept waiting for him to be revealed as a cyborg, since human emotions seem to be beyond his pale.

Thankfully we have the Jemaine Clement (Avatar: The Way of Water) in his usual hilarious form as a wheelchair bound genius who offers Gemma big money to reinvent Megan for his own purposes. For the half hour that he's in the film, zipping around clumsily in a wheelchair that would put Professor Charles Xavier's to shame and seducing mystery women with Austin Powers moves, the whole thing works. Clement's comic timing is perfect. It's like Peter Sellers dropping in for a half hour from a MUCH better movie.

But as soon as he's gone, you're left with about an hour to go.

Why in the hell is this movie so long? If you'd cut 75% of Williams and Athari out of the film, it would be as shiny as Megan's exoskeleton.

There's no doubt that Megan's dialogue and violent gymnastics (by Aimee Donald) are crisp, sarcastic and pretty funny. Her android adversary Amelia, played by Ivanna Sakhno (Pacific Rim: Uprising) brings the fun too. But every time the action starts to move, we're off on another dull subplot.

Writer/Director Gerard Johnstone manages to shoehorn in references to many other films, including some obvious but enjoyable homages to T2, the holy grail of killer robot movies. Megan looks like she's cosplaying Tron in the sequence below.

The film's tagline is Everybody deserves a second chance.

In the words of Adam Sandler, "You BLEW IT!

MEGAN 2.0 is an overstuffed, action spy comedy masquerading as a killer cyborg B movie. I'll unplug it from future viewing with a C-.