Sorry, M3GAN 2.0 — Soulm8te sinks lower on Rotten Tomatoes

If you thought the M3GAN franchise couldn't go any further off the rails, the latest entry has managed to prove otherwise. Soulm8te, the newest spin-off in Blumhouse's AI horror circus, has just set an unfortunate new record on Rotten Tomatoes. For those keeping track, that's not the sort of milestone they'll want to put in the marketing blurb.

Soulm8te holds a 55% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest in the M3GAN series so far.

Let's go through the numbers because, honestly, they tell the whole story. The original M3GAN stormed onto the scene with a very respectable 93% score and the much-coveted Certified Fresh seal, based on a whopping 318 critic reviews. The sequel, M3GAN 2.0, couldn't keep up that energy but still managed 57% from 245 reviews. Soulm8te? It's limping in with a 55% and that's just from 11 critics at the moment (yes, 11—they may have run out of reviewers willing to watch yet another killer AI flick).

Story and Release

This one came courtesy of director Kate Dolan, who co-wrote the script alongside Rafael Jordan. The cast sees David Rysdahl, Lily Sullivan, and Claudia Doumit all doing their best with what they were given. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment decided to skip cinemas altogether, planting Soulm8te straight onto streaming as of 1 August 2026. Possibly a smart move, considering the dwindling box office returns for the sequels—M3GAN pulled in $95 million domestically, but M3GAN 2.0 notched just $24.1 million. This time, they didn't even bother with a theatrical run.

The Critics Are Not Impressed

Early reviews have not been kind. David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter gave it a 'Fresh', but only just. He did concede the movie was

"more watchable than you might expect, and the cast is appealing,"

but felt it recycled far too much from last year's Companion. Katie Rife at RogerEbert.com gave the film a single star out of four and said it should serve as a warning sign for studio execs getting too cosy with AI scripts. The AV Club's Jacob Oller gave the film a C-, calling it "the dumbest movie of the year to brush against the idea of the havoc men wreak." No one is pulling any punches here, clearly.

Plot: Familiar Territory

This time round, we're following a recently bereaved engineer who lets a tech conglomerate buy up his company, then becomes the first guinea pig for their new AI companion—meant to be a sort of sentient soulmate. Of course, things quickly go sideways, as she develops her own ideas about relationships (turns out programming personality is always a mistake in these films), and—wouldn't you know it?—kicks off a "relentless spree of precision-engineered mayhem". It's the usual cocktail of tech-phobia and horror, only with even fewer original moves this time round.

• M3GAN: 93% (318 reviews), $95M box office, theatrical release
• M3GAN 2.0: 57% (245 reviews), $24.1M box office, theatrical release
• Soulm8te: 55% (11 reviews), streaming only, zero box office