The Meg (2018)

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Jump to "Now Playing" Review for 'Meg 2: The Trench'

While it may be fading a bit nowadays, there's a massive fandom behind sharks. Whether it be watching mind-blowing documentaries like Disney's 'Oceans,' in which we see people peacefully swimming with sharks, or a series of disaster movies that blend weather phenomena with sharks for a decent B-movie, audiences seem to eat this stuff up. Discovery Channel even has a whole week dedicated to them every year! However, I never really got into any of it, so don't expect much praise from me on this film right off the bat.

That's not to say that this was necessarily bad, but I've seen better shark flicks, 'Jaws' being the undisputed king of them all. But they've taken all of the true horror away from what sharks can do, and it's far too often combined with comedy to be, as mentioned, a B-movie, which is fine, but how many times do we seriously need to do it with sharks? And while some half-decent shark horror titles are out there, they seem to swim below the B-movie type; the 'Sharknado series is the obvious front line of it all.

By the time I saw 'The Meg,' I was already bored with the shark thing, but I sincerely hope that Jason Statham's presence as an action hero would bring real fun back into what a fun shark movie could be.  I can give this an A for effort, but I daresay it fell short of my expectations. It all starts as rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) fails on a rescue attempt and decides he'll never dive again. Five years later, however, he is talked into another rescue dive, this time at the bottom of the Marianas Trench—the deepest known spot on Earth.

Recruited by his old friend James "Mac" Mackreides (Cliff Curtis), Jonas is brought into a project funded by billionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson) and supervised by Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao) and his daughter, Suyin (Bingbing Li), meant to explore and discover unknown life deep within the trench. In the process, some explorers come in need of rescue, including Japanese scientist Toshi (Masi Oka), American scientist "The Wall" (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), and above all else, Jonas' ex-wife, Lori (Jessica McNamee).

During all this, we get glimpses of a giant squid, but more importantly, our title predator, "The Meg" (a Megalodon shark from the Prehistoric era), unleashed onto the world thanks to human greed. And not to keep things too simple, but frankly, the rest is Jason Statham vs. a giant shark, which, at times, is fun. But an unfortunate amount of time in this movie takes place without a huge shark, and I have to admit wondering, "Isn't there a big shark somewhere?" When the scenes happen, they're fun but few and far between.

As far as criticizing this too hard, it happens to be a title I see very much as it all depending on what you're looking for. There's enough here that I don't think shark movie fans will ultimately be disappointed. When the action happens, it's decent enough. But I have to imagine this doesn't make a whole lot of Shark Movie Top 10 lists. But again, the whole shark thing is sort of lost on me, so who knows? This might just be one of those things that isn't for me, but for all the other Shark Week-watchers and shark B-movie fans.

I'd have to say that I've seen a few different dumb, fun action movies about sharks that I enjoyed quite a bit more. But to say this is or isn't precisely what shark fans are looking for is difficult. I'd even go as far as to say watch it as more of a Statham fan because there's more of him than the actual shark. It's a perfectly passable movie for what it is, and it's not like I left it feeling thoroughly disappointed, but it's another case of just knowing better titles for this kind of thing, depending on what you're looking for. But give it a shot if you're a shark fan. If nothing else, it can be seen as mindless fun.


3/5

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