Main cast: Simon Davies (Aiden), Ethan Taylor (Leo), Leona Clarke (Lexi), Michaela Longden (Freya), Luke James (Sam), Mollie Hindle (Sargeant Farmer), and Victor Mellors (Detective Proctor)
Director: Lawrence Fowler

It may be tempting to call Rob1n a M3GAN ripoff, but I will always side eye those people that make this claim.

Do they think M3GAN is that groundbreaking? If anything, that movie rips off every monster doll trope out there that isn’t nailed down. At least this one has a semi-decent plot.

The movie opens with a boy killing off the guests at his birthday party before whacking away at his mother with a baseball bat like the happiest psychopath in the world. Then he gets shot. Good riddance. Guess what that boy’s name is.

However, his uncle Aiden seems enamored of that psycho, because he has built a companion robot that he names after that monster. The fact that the robot kills the house cat and anything — anyone — that seems to have Aiden’s attention even a little doesn’t concern the old man at all. 

This is what Leo, Aiden’s estranged new, and his fiancée Lexi will find out when they accept Aiden’s invitation to visit.

Aiden was in an accident a while back and has since lost all memories of his time prior to the accident. He seems to have lost his old personality too, as Leo remembers Aiden as an eccentric and miserly man, and here, the old man seems uncharacteristically warm and even generous. 

Leo also has his own reasons to be here. He has borrowed a lot of money from a loan shark, and unless he pays them back soon, they will hurt Lexi. Stealing money from Aiden seems like a reasonable way to get that much money in a short time, no?

Now, this is not a great movie. It is full of played out cliches, like idiots that, upon hearing weird sounds, walk deeper into dark scary rooms instead of running to somewhere bright and call the cops. It is also reliant on tedious jump scares that feel more like cheap booyah moments than anything else.

However, it’s not a bad movie either.

Simon Davies steals every scene he is as the affable and genial Aiden that, at the same time, radiates some kind of wrongness about him, like he may be a bit psychotic himself.

The rest of the cast members don’t have much to do, but they aren’t too bad either as they can deliver their lines adequately enough to convey human emotions even when they are doing stupid things. Ethan Taylor is also easy on the eyes, which never hurts. 

So yes, this is an okay movie that is deliberately marketed to appeal to fans of M3GAN — I believe it went with a different title until someone had the bright idea of going with the current title — but I have to admit, I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I actually like it more than M3GAN!