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MEG 2: THE TRENCH
Director: Ben Wheatley Cast: Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sophia Cai, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, Melissanthi Mahut, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Skyler Samuels, Sienna Guillory, Whoopie Van Raam, Kiran Sonia Sawar, Felix Mayr MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:56 Release Date: 8/4/23 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 4, 2023 The bar for the makers of Meg 2: The Trench has been set fairly low, simply by way of the movie's existence. No one expects much from the sequel to any shark movie, let alone one that didn't quite accomplish its own silly, minimal goals. That was the case five years ago with The Meg, in which a team of assorted archetypes found themselves confronted by a prehistoric megalodon in the modern world. The original established only a few expectations, mainly in seeing a giant shark attack various structures and vehicles and people, and, ultimately, didn't quite fulfill those promises. Director Ben Wheatley's sequel promises more of the same, only to forget it until the absurd but still disappointing third act. This is in spite of the fact that the screenplay (written by the three writers of the first movie and based on the second novel in Steve Alten's series) actually begins with a trio of intriguingly silly ideas. The first is a prologue that details the food chain of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, with a string of insects and lizards and a fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex participating in the cycle—until a megalodon pops out of the sea and has the dinosaur for lunch. The next returns us to the previous and this movie's hero, deep-sea rescuer Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), who has now become something of a secret agent fighting back against those who pollute the planet's seas and oceans. That scene, aboard a cargo ship in the middle of open waters, serves no purpose for the rest of the story, except to remind us that Jonas is more than capable as a fighter, but the notion of our hero as a brawling ecological activist is such a novel one that almost becomes a shame that story is just the prelude to the one we actually get. The third ridiculous idea—and, trust me, it's a glorious doozy—is that someone has turned a megalodon into a pet. Yes, Jiu-ming (Wu Jing), the current head of the oceanographic institute from the original (following the deaths of his father—to the shark—and sister—presumably, to the actor's wise unwillingness to return), captured and has trained a young prehistoric shark to see him as a friend and to follow commands. Now, there's a story filled with ludicrous potential. As for whether or not Jiu-ming's experiment has been successful, that question is mostly irrelevant to this story, which quickly abandons the megalodons—yes, plural—for a deep-sea not-too-much-of-an-adventure revolving around a clandestine underwater facility, the rogue mining of rare earth metals, and a collection of greedy, traitorous, and/or vengeful human villains. Pun or not, the term bait-and-switch is too appropriate to pass up in this case (although, speaking of puns, Staham's character does have a fairly clever one after kicking someone into a megalodon's mouth). What follows in this story, then, is a string of definitively non-giant-shark-related complications. Some members of the team are picked off one-by-one by assorted other creatures or physics in a deep-sea trench. The survivors become trapped in the facility, and Jonas has to figure out how to rescue himself, his adopted daughter Mei-ying (Sophia Cai), Jiu-ming, and other new or returning characters in the facility or back on the research platform. All of these character remain as bland as in the first movie, and without even that one's vague acknowledgement of how silly the enterprise is, they feel especially unremarkable in the sequel. The megalodons, as well as a giant octopus, are still here, of course. Before they actually arrive to do anything, though, one has to get through a series of other scenes of human-on-human fights and a questionable grasp of pressure's effect on the human body (The script goes to great lengths to explain how Jonas pulls off one trick, only to allow a villain to quickly rise 25,000 feet to the surface without any issue). Once the movie finally arrives as the giant-monster carnage, it mostly feels like a rehash of the predecessor's climax, albeit with a few different species of creatures killing off random tourists on a resort island. For those who care about such things, Wheatley's grisly senses of violence and humor are certainly undercut by what must have been the studio's insistence that said mayhem remain mostly appropriate for a teenage audience. Yes, the bar for Meg 2: The Trench was quite, quite low. The movie doesn't even meet it, though. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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