Meg 2: The Trench review – Still no sea legs

Back in 2018, science fiction actioner The Meg became one of the blockbuster hits of the Northern Hemisphere summer. It was also notable as one of the first big American and Chinese co-productions to achieve success on both sides of the Pacific while explicitly speaking to Chinese audiences. This was thanks to popular local stars (Li Bingbing, Winston Chao) and settings (Sanya Bay) thrown into the mix.

The Meg did very well commercially, but critically less so. It wasn’t panned, but it was also kind of, well, toothless. For a movie about man versus prehistoric super shark, it was pretty straight-faced and safe. Until its final act, it didn’t embrace the absurdity of its premise – that deep sea research could lure massive megalodons to the ocean surface and trigger an unstoppable feeding frenzy. Ignoring the trashy Sharknados of the world, The Meg didn’t even venture as far into the ridiculous as its closest movie cousin, 1999’s Deep Blue Sea.

This is a roundabout way of saying that, with the original keeping a surprisingly tight grip on the reins, five-years-later sequel Meg 2: The Trench has a lot of room to play. Here’s its chance to deliver the silly popcorn flick that audiences wanted the first time around – essentially a watery Jurassic Park of that franchise’s later years, with the Crichton smarts and Spielberg full-package flair removed.

Without spoiling too much, Meg 2: The Trench does lean hard in a Jurassic Park direction. With that film series on hiatus, here’s the Meg with clear ambitions to fill that toothy monster gap, right down to using its opening scene to position the Megalodon as the ultimate apex predator of the Cretaceous Period, superior even to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The movie is also clearly in “sequel equals more” mode. Unfortunately, that means many of the original film’s flaws have been amplified, particularly a tonal see-sawing that is like trying to walk on a ship’s deck during a squall.

Meg 2: The Trench starts off serious again, as before using a book in the Meg novel series by Steve Alten as its very loose basis. Years after the events of the first film, rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is a conservation vigilante, protecting the world’s oceans when he’s not taking part in research missions out of the Mana One underwater facility with old teammates, and Meg survivors, Mac (Cliff Curtis), DJ (Page Kennedy) and Jonas’s teenage stepdaughter Meiying (Sophia Cai). Mana One is now run by Meiying’s ambitious uncle Jiuming Zhang (Asian action star Wu Jing).

New employees feature as well, but with the exception of Melissanthi Mahut’s roguish pilot, nobody else matters. There’s little in the way of character introduction, let alone development, and the cast is swiftly whittled down – which in this case is a good thing as there is some appalling acting from the likes of Skyler Samuels.

Unlike its predecessor, Meg 2: The Trench ups the human villainy. It turns out that the ocean floor is being subjected to an illegal mining operation, led by hulking Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), who is causing havoc as he strips out rare earth minerals for profit.

The first half of Meg 2: The Trench plays out like one of Dan Brown’s pre-Robert Langdon adventure thrillers. It’s dumb but engrossing enough, with director Ben Wheatley, who has a background in stylish ensemble action and horror – and who replaces National Treasure’s Jon Turteltaub – mixing Journey to the Centre of the Earth explorations with survival chills, and a sprinkling of effective jump scares.

Meg 2: The Trench works when it’s in this darker, more intense mode, but then it remembers it’s supposed to be delivering mass monster slaughter – of the safe and mostly bloodless PG-13 kind (though somehow the film is age restricted 16 in South Africa). So, audiences, with their brains already starved of oxygen, are hauled to the ocean surface with a speed that would give any diver the bends.

It’s at this point the big bads behave even more illogically, Page Kennedy transforms from tech wiz to black man comic relief (à la LL Cool J), and viewers are smacked by a CGI deluge that looks less convincing than the effects of five years ago. Meanwhile, Wu Jing is a likeable co-lead but there is little indication of his action superstar status. It’s all about Statham, who somehow manages to zip around on a jet ski and fling himself into the sea without ever looking wet. Though at least he’s never phoning in his performance.

It’s all silly, and yet somehow not satisfying. Meg 2: The Trench doesn’t feel like it was made by committee, but just as its giant sharks are restrained by anchor lines, the film is knotted up in an apparent desire to please as wide an audience as possible. And as is the case for many sharks, that immobility is fatal for the film. Weirdly, the first Meg movie is still better.

Meg 2: The Trench surfaces in cinemas from today, 4 August.