'The Meg 2: The Trench' Review: The Fins and the Furious Falls Flat
Before even reading this review, ask yourself a question: why are you interested in The Meg 2: The Trench? Did you enjoy the first film’s basic, borderline believable approach to big shark shenanigans? If so, skip the sequel. Are you in it for Jaws-esque, tension-based, man vs. shark action? Yes? Refund your tickets before it’s too late.
The only way to approach The Meg 2 and leave unscathed is by, first, accepting that Jason Statham is completely and utterly invincible; no matter how daunting the scenario, or how big the beast, he’s gonna find a way to best it. Second, and equally as important, nothing makes remote sense. The science is word-salad, the physics otherworldly, and the circumstances often just plain stupid. If you can stomach those two conditions, there may be some fun to be had here.
Ben Wheatley’s direction is a monstrous leap from that of Jon Turteltaub in the first film. He brings a sense of scale crucial to the franchise (if you can call it that), and ups the stakes with his scenic gravitas alone; that said, because the characters alone won’t generate any. This cast is mostly new, with the few returning faces being mostly relegated to supporting roles. Even then, all the important characters are attached to Jason Statham’s hip the entire time and, if you remember condition one, you know they aren’t in any danger. The false-fear that is conjured up from that scenario renders any sense of tension completely weightless, though Wheatley works hard to earn it back with energetic action sequences that blow anything from the first film out of the water. To some extent, he succeeds.
A few scenes are an inch too absurd to land, and others too soft to make an impact, but when Wheatley finds the balance, he delivers some really memorable moments. A fight sequence in the titular underwater trench, as well as the jet-ski sequence featured prominently in the trailers, come to mind. Action filmmaking can overcome the most insane circumstances if it can to show the audience something they haven’t seen before, and The Meg 2 manages that.
Though these heart-pounding displays of adrenaline often feel disconnected in this case because, when they aren’t fighting megalodons or other various unreal creatures, every character is penned with a remarkable lack of wit and charm. Even Statham, who still carries the film in spite of this, struggles to draw a laugh from this script. Everyone else sinks completely below the weight of jokes and dialogue that feel computer-generated to target an audience from ten years ago. There is a bit of decent humor to be found in the practical jokes; wordless displays of over-the-top emotion and violence driven by the sharks taking detours just to eat people, or other monsters toying with one-word villains who were clearly put in the film to die from the beginning. That dichotomy draws back to the biggest thing about this film and many like it: the creatures are the crux.
In the end, nobody is buying a ticket for the humans. It doesn’t matter who it is (although Statham is as good a lead as you can get for this sort of thing). Like Legendary’s Monsterverse films, nobody is showing up to see the Skull Island survivors; they’re showing up to see King Kong. The sooner the people behind these movies understand that, the sooner they break the mediocre rhythm that they’ve been stuck in forever. Godzilla vs. Kong almost had it, and then, despite the intermittent entertainment, The Meg 2 forces in terrible human characters on both sides of good and evil and smothers what could’ve been. One step forward, two steps back.
The villains introduced here are especially egregious. One thing the first Meg movie does have over this sequel is that there weren’t any human villains at all, at least not explicitly. Rainn Wilson’s billionaire investor was certainly a bad dude, but he never posed a threat. The Meg 2 employs multiple baddies; all basic and utterly pointless. It attempts to churn out a purpose for their wrongdoings, but quickly abandons it beyond the initial explanation. The film presents a threat beyond the wildlife, but only really utilizes them when the wildlife is also in play, so they’re always overshadowed. Every cut to them demands an eye-roll, or a yawn. Either way, you’ll be counting down to the next cut, which reveals some sort of prehistoric animal racing through the water towards the faintest drop of blood. How did the filmmakers not understand, that’s cool enough on its own?
Alas, we’re stuck with a ballad of confused inconsistency on the page that muddles a film that is a conceptual stroke of genius. Ben Wheatley is so right for this, and for the millionth time, this isn’t Statham’s fault. Though there is something to be said about just how different this film is than its predecessor and how, in the end, it ends up in almost the exact same place.
Clearly, the minds behind The Meg 2 wanted to go bigger, and in doing so, they toned it down. Less monster mashing to make room for the new villains, who would then be disposed of before the climax, which is essentially a one-to-one retread of the first film’s. The first two acts may be night and day, but the same dull sun shines over Statham’s slo-mo shark battle in both. The Meg 2 just won’t commit any one direction, and therefore comes away with little to nothing of its own.
For a summer day out at the movies, you could do a lot worse than this. It’s guaranteed fun on the first go, at least to a point, and will likely surprise with a few set-pieces and even some scares. But later down the line, when The Meg 2 is only available in the confines of your living room, there won’t be many reasons to go back to it. Perhaps it’ll find a specific audience and thrive in some obscure corner of the internet (it’d fit well with the recent Fast and Furious sequels), but this is a rather massive misfire on its own merits.