2018’s The Meg was a huge leathery skinned monster, open mouthed on a constant quest for food and unfounded rumours had it that the role would be played by Gemma Collins but CGI won the day and the 2018 film was a huge success. Leap forward to 2023 and to the first sequel, ‘The Meg 2 The Trench’ where we now have several Meg sharks all ready to be punched by Jason Statham as diver and hero Jonas Taylor and whose creative way of dispatching the shark in the first film will inevitably be called upon here. Here he is now working for JiuMing (Jing Wu) brother to Suyin Zhang from the first film who doesn’t return. JiuMing runs a huge oceanic research centre where they have somehow reared their own baby Meg in captivity. This initial moment of daftness is further compounded with him believing that he can ‘train’ the shark with a scene of him dangling in the tank with a clicker in his hand. It an idea that must rate alongside the moment when Prince Harry thought he should write his autobiography.
But JiuMing along with Statham and several others on their research team including Sophia Cai as Suyin’s daughter who smuggles herself on board one of two submersible submarines that they navigate through an ice cold barrier of hydrogen sulphide above The Trench of the film’s title where other Meg’s will reside along with other ravenous beasties. Inevitably their mission goes awry owing to a subplot of industrial espionage and Statham has to get himself and the others back to the surface where the sharks, led by an impressively gnarled apex predator Meg follow them. Let the carnage commence !
Unfortunately most of that carnage seems to have been visited upon the script, a generally uneven mish-mash and plundering of other and frankly far better films that include Aliens. Jurassic Park and even a nod to Jaws with a dog named Pippin and at one point there’s a danger of the film veering into gleefully bonkers ‘ Sharktopus’ territory from the stable of Roger Corman (now a Meg 3 under his tutelage we’d love to see!). The Meg, certainly the one deemed as a truly gigantic apex predator is impressively rendered in the first part of the film and we get plenty of opportunities to marvel at is ominous presence but by the third act in the cold light of day far less so and like the recent Marvel films there’s a feeling that maybe the effects house needed more time
Being a big budget monster movie where, let’s be honest, what audiences want to see is a giant shark feeding on feckless human fodder, credibility is not what we’re after and on that front it certainly delivers as much due to its seemingly change of scale in various scenarios as anything else. Perhaps the biggest disappointment here is that the normally excellent Ben Wheatley who had directed horror so well in films such as ‘Kill List’ but here is given a budget greater than probably all his previous films combined yet seems to have be lost his creative spark. There are the occasional moments of inspiration – a load of tourists getting gobbled up as seen from inside the Meg’s mouth being on such moment – but on the whole this is a bit of a bloodless affair which the first film managed to brush over with decent set pieces to distract.
It would be impossible to top ‘Jaws’ – more of a thriller than anything else – but subsequent shark films have proved enjoyable and The Meg films have always set themselves up as popcorn pleasers but much of the issues with Meg 2 lies with the scripting and there is little original here. With a film based on a series of books there must have been better chapters to expand on and the first film, having been such a enjoyably guilty pleasure, whereas Meg 2 disappoints and as Statham says towards the end of the film , ‘I don’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now ‘ except now the potential box office return may well reflect the audiences feeling too.
related feature : Meg 2 filming facts….
related feature : Animatronic shark problems | Director Martin Wilson talks about the problems filming, ‘Great White’
Here’s three meg’s swimming up the Thames ….
Here’s The Meg 2 trailer…..
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