A tip of the hat to Ivana Sakhno, who gives one of the more convincingly metallic turns as a woman-playing a robot in “M3GAN 2.0,” a killer robot sequel that leans even harder into well-founded AI phobia.

She is Maria in Fritz Lang’s classic “Metropolis” rendered in brutish Robert Patrick strokes in this “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” inspired thriller.

The follow-up to the surprise smash of the winter of 2022 goes for grim laughs this time out, with star Allison Williams reduced to straight man woman. Producer credit or not, she lets us know how she feels about that in every inexpressive, under-reacting moment she’s on screen. Literally everybody and everything here upstages her.

A military grade upgrade of the child-protective-robot of the first film goes rogue. Amelia, your steely, supermodelish Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android has run amok and is on the hunt for a master cloud server that will allow her control of Life on Earth.

Naturally, there’s a smirking, chip-implanting tech oligarch (Jemaine Clement) who has wired the world for his version of an AI future that Amelia is ready-made to exploint.

Only a rebooted M3GAN, still snarkily-voiced by Jenna Davis, can stop Amelia. Inventor Gemma (Williams), now a crusading, best-selling anti-AI/anti cell-phones-for-kids foster parent to Cady (Violet McGraw), kept M3GAN’s electronic brain around, but this time she’ll keep her in check by sticking her in an AI digital assistant-bot form.

But you can’t keep our avenging AI angel in “this plastic Teletubby” if you want her to stop Amelia. They’ll have to “rebuild a deranged robot in order to catch another deranged robot” if humanity is to have a chance.

M3GAN’s “You know I could never hurt you” reassurances to Cady, her insincere apologies to Gemma’s team (Jen Van Epps, Brian Jordan Alvarez) for trying to kill them in the first movie will have to do.

Gemma’s “virtue signalling snowflake” fellow anti-AI crusader beau (“Saturday Night Live’s” Aristotle Athari) better not get in M3GAN’s way, either.

Clement and Athari make the strongest comic impressions here, with FBI home invasion “jokes” and a cocky, stumbling, rights-violating military man (Timm Sharp) giving the film a tech fascism topicality.

Sakhno is steely-eyed menace personified. Those “Be Robert Patrick” stage directions paid off.

But with M3GAN cracking jokes, striking sassy teen poses and the like, the frights are never anything to take seriously.

Some of the jokes land. Some do not. And through it all, not a moment of rising threat level or terror registers credibly on anybody’s face. It’s as if they’re all in on the joke, with Williams merely the worst at spoiling the punchline.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Allison Williams, Jemaine Clement, Ivana Sakhno, Jen Van Epps, Violet McGraw, Aristotle Athari, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Timm Sharp and Amie Donald with the voice of Jenna Davis.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Gerald Johnstone, based on characters created by Akela Cooper and James Wan. Universal Pictures release.

Running time: 2:00