Three years on from a wildly successful screen debut, everyone’s favourite robot doll returned in summer 2025 in M3GAN 2.0, a movie that successfully (don’t mind the reviews) traded the horror elements of its predecessor for the kind of fun and action you usually get in an MCU movie—and with better jokes.
It’s true, Akela Cooper and Gerard Johnstone’s creation has gone the unlikely route of Arnie’s Terminator, leaving the killing (mostly) behind to become the franchise’s central antihero. If you’ve seen M3GAN 2.0 and are craving the company of more sadistic hardware, then check out our list, in no particular order, of the best movies featuring homicidal robots. Use the guide below to find out where to watch them all on streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and elsewhere.
Ex Machina (2014)
If you’re a fan of M3GAN’s iconic dance sequence and twisty screenplay, Ex-Machina is the ideal chaser. This is the movie that really cemented Alex Garland’s standing in Hollywood—representing both his first project as director and his first nomination at the Oscars. The story follows a programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) who journeys to the compound of a tech billionaire (Oscar Isaac), where he is tasked with testing if his latest creation, Ava (Alicia Vikander), is sentient.
It also shares some DNA with M3GAN in central conceit, with both films not so subtly positioning their android protagonists‘ self-actualisation as metaphors for female empowerment. Is it too late to suggest a crossover? Whatever the case, it doesn’t end well for the fellas.
Companion (2025)
Even if the protagonist of Companion, who is both an AI girlfriend and a sex-bot, is designed for an older, ickier customer base than M3GAN, Drew Hancock’s film has just as much fun in playing with our anxieties around what AI products will do when they realise that they don’t have to take orders anymore. If that particular strain of M3GAN was to your liking, you’ll have plenty of fun with this one.
Jack Quaid is appropriately sleazy as an all too depressingly human boyfriend, but Sophie Thatcher is the real casting coup here: The Yellowjackets actress would have probably been cast in manic-pixie roles ten years ago, but in Companion, she gets to play against those tropes and take some revenge on the softbois. We can be certain M3GAN would approve.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Created by Stanley Kubrick before he died, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a dark fairytale about a commercially available, android child that Steven Spielberg spins into a Pinocchio-inflected tragedy—one in which the boy never quite becomes real. M3GAN fans will be familiar with the film’s warnings about bringing such a product into the family home—just don’t expect Haley Joel Osment’s David to start twerking it to Chappell Roan.
A.I. has its scarier moments, but it’s not a horror or comedy— if anything, it will probably make you cry—so if you’re after the former tones, I’d suggest looking elsewhere on this list. As a dive into the ideas that M3GAN is playing with, however, few movies have looked deeper into the soul of the machine.
The Terminator (1984)
Four decades before anyone had even heard of learning models like ChatGPT, The Terminator was already making itself synonymous with the terror of AI. If you want to see an iconic early adopter of M3GAN’s themes, and one that rips along like the very best James Cameron movies, look no further.
If she keeps posting to Letterboxd, we might one day find out what M3GAN thinks of Arnie’s iconic performance as a killer robot sent back in time to murder the unborn leader of a future human revolution. We assume she will approve. A great sequel and a series of gradually diminishing movies followed, but Cameron’s original—a lean, mean, masterpiece—will never be beaten.
RoboCop (1987)
Though accurately considered among the best action movies of the 1980s, Robocop—Paul Verhoeven’s winking takedown of Reagan-era America—is not short on satirical bite, so if you came away from M3GAN wanting more of the movie’s potshots at corporate greed, this might be the movie for you.
There’s something vaguely fascistic about Verhoeven’s bionic hero, a robotically repurposed policeman who was shot down in the field, but the reward for creepiness has to go to the ED-209. Brought to life with uncanny stop-motion animation by legendary special effects artist Phil Tippett, the 209 is ruthless when it comes to murdering junior executives. Just don’t ask it to take the stairs.
Alien (1979)
The antagonist of Alien—Ridley Scott’s triumphant attempt to take the haunted house movie to outer space—is one of the most efficient killing machines ever put on screen. If you’re looking for fewer gags and more chills after watching M3GAN, it’s always a good time to watch it. That said, like many horror antagonists before it, our robotic friend included, the xenomorph operates on pure survival instinct, so who can really blame it?
The true monsters are, of course, the humans, not that we see the worst of them on screen. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s most loyal representative on the Nostromo is Ash, an android shipmate who takes his job and primary objective a bit too seriously. Played by Ian Holm, we don’t get to see if he can compete with M3GAN’s moves, but he’s just as prone to bouts of insolence and mutiny.
Blade Runner (1982)
Three years after Alien, Ridley Scott completed one of the best non-sequential double features in history. An adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Blade Runner is a story about how it’s so confusing sometimes to be a replicant. If you liked the sci-fi elements of M3GAN and are looking for more philosophical musings on the ghost in the machine, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The story centres on a character who may or may not be a replicant, but there’s no confusion about the movie’s legendary antihero, Roy Batty, who has exactly the kind of brooding aura and phenomenal drip that M3GAN would appreciate.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Kubrick’s second mention on this list comes courtesy of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable red light in all of cinema. The Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer, better known as HAL 3000, is a cold, calculating AI that walked (metaphorically) so that M3GAN could run. If you’re interested in seeing a true originator of M3GAN’s cold, calculated, and sometimes murderous decision-making, look no further.
Voiced by Douglas Rain, the movie‘s supercomputer antagonist is now basically a byword for artificial intelligence’s presumed capacity for dead-eyed cruelty. I mean sure, HAL doesn’t always open the pod bay doors—he also can’t let you do that, Dave—but like M3GAN, he at least knows his way around a tune.
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Don’t worry too much about Scarlett Johansson’s harshly maligned live-action remake; Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime is the essential screen adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, and a classic of the genre.
MEGAN heads looking for a deeply considered view of where our relationship with AI is headed will find much to ponder over in it, but that doesn’t mean that Oshii’s movie is short on kills or action: The movie offers a deeply philosophical vision of the future, centred on a counter terrorism cyborg called Major Motoko, who, much like M3GAN, is awfully nifty in a fight.
Saturn 3 (1980)
Despite being directed by Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain), written by Martin Amis (The Zone of Interest), and developed by the legendary production designer John Barry (Star Wars)—I suddenly want M3GAN reviews of all those movies—Saturn 3 is widely considered one of the most notoriously bad sci-fi films of the 1980s. Still, if you enjoy the camp streak in the M3GAN universe, you’ll appreciate the movie’s bad taste.
Saturn 3 is a movie that Roger Ebert described as having a “shockingly low” level of intelligence—so naturally, it’s garnered a cult following over the years. Not least for its robot antagonist, named Hector, who is partially developed using the brain tissue of human fetuses. What could possibly go wrong?
