It would seem almost impossible to botch a film pitting Jason Statham against a gargantuan prehistoric shark, and yet that was the only feat accomplished by The Meg, director John Turteltaub’s underwhelming 2018 aquatic monster mash. Nonetheless, with a $530 million global box-office haul, a sequel was preordained, and with English auteur Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England, In the Earth) at the helm, Meg 2: The Trench seemed primed to at least surpass its incompetent predecessor, if not finally deliver the B-movie goods promised by its outlandish premise.
Alas, it does neither—and in a mundane fashion that negates even unintentional comedy.
If his name weren’t listed in the credits, there’d be no way to tell that Wheatley directed Meg 2: The Trench (Aug. 4, in theaters); there’s zero trace of the psychotronic folk horror, mordant humor or demented bloodshed that marked his earlier work. Rather, the film (adapted from Steve Alten’s book) largely stays the aesthetic course set by Turteltaub’s original, full of high-tech contraptions and screen readouts, helter-skelter choreography, and dimly lit centerpieces involving its colossal CGI creatures. The nicest thing one can say about it is that cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos mercifully ditches The Meg’s Chinese blockbuster-grade visual glossiness, instead opting for a somewhat flatter and duller sheen.
Meg 2: The Trench trumps its ancestor by refusing to endlessly tease the sight of its signature megalodon, which appears in both a Cretaceous-period prologue that demonstrates its top-of-the-food-chain position, and in the present day, where one Meg has been given the name Haiqi by scientist Jiuming (Wu Jing) and is being kept in a Chinese research facility as a veritable pet. This is the height of idiocy, and the idea that hero Jonas (Statham), who previously fought one of these beasts, is OK with it makes no more sense. Then again, almost nothing in this misfire does, including Jiuming’s belief that he can use a hand clicker to train Haiqi to behave. “Megs and humanity were never meant to mix,” opines Jonas, stating the obvious despite the fact that he’s a member of this team of explorers dedicated to surveying the ancient Mariana Trench depths hidden below a thermocline barrier through which their ships can pass—but Megs can’t.
Just as The Fast and the Furious movies casually (read: absurdly) turned Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto from a car thief into a super-spy-badass, so too does Meg 2: The Trench transform deep sea diver Jonas into a daring eco-warrior (“Green James Bond”) who, when not collaborating with Jiuming on his Meg shenanigans, is gathering intel on evil ocean polluters. He’s also even more adept than before at combat because, well, he’s played by Statham and that’s what audiences naturally expect from the star. Far from merely a noble brute, however, Jonas is simultaneously the caring surrogate father to 14-year-old Meiying (Sophia Cai), whose uncle is Jiuming and whose mother Suyin (Li Bingbing) is—for unceremoniously unexplained reasons—dead. Such is the slushy storytelling of this dim-witted affair, whose making-it-up-as-it-goes-along nature extends to the fact that DJ (Page Kennedy), once a wise-cracking, water-averse technician, is now a cocky, highly trained survivalist.
Because they love putting themselves in unnecessary danger, Jonas, Jiuming, and various disposable supporting characters take yet another trip to the Trench, during which Haiqi escapes confinement and they discover a mysterious mining facility located deep beneath the thermocline. They additionally encounter a trio of Megs (including the biggest one ever seen!), as well as a baddie who has personal beef with Jonas and who sabotages everything by setting off an explosion that creates a catastrophic landslide. This incapacitates Jonas and his friends’ ships and forces them to trek across the ocean floor in oh-so-handy exo-suits developed by Jiuming that bestow them with veritable superpowers and—in most cases—just enough oxygen to make it to their destination. Along the way, they contend with the Megs and other fantastical dinosaur adversaries, or at least that’s what appears to be happening, given that Wheatley shoots this material in borderline-incomprehensible murk.
There’s no doubt the Megs will eventually reach the surface and wreak havoc on humanity, since that’s the only reason Meg 2: The Trench exists. After 20 minutes of enduring its narrative ridiculousness, there’s also little question that the sharks will do so courtesy of some preposterous turn of events—an assumption that proves depressingly correct. Before the film can make it to its climax at a swanky resort on Fun Island (yes, that’s really the degree of imagination we’re working with here), it wastes time on Jonas and company battling faceless mercenaries on a research rig and, later, sub-Jurassic Park critters on an island—a generic and listless action scenario that no one who paid money to see this sequel wanted.
Then again, there’s scant satisfaction of any kind to be had from this soggy endeavor, considering its failure to deliver terrifying awe, white-knuckle suspense, or tension-puncturing humor; the best it can manage is dialogue like Jonas stating, “That was close” and Jiuming responding, “Too close!”
Meg 2: The Trench continues the franchise’s clunky pandering to the Chinese marketplace and so-so digital designs; the Megs look big and nasty if consistently unreal, especially when they’re leaping out of the water to nearly chomp Jonas in two. Wheatley’s single virtuoso flourish is a shot from inside a Meg’s mouth as it chows down on screaming vacationers. Otherwise, his chaos and madness is of a blandly cartoonish variety, neither serious enough to scare nor outlandish enough to elicit laughs. For the most part, it’s merely a litany of inanities: Jonas holding his breath and swimming at a depth of 25,000 feet sans protective gear (apparently, that whole underwater-pressure thing is a lie!); a corporate cretin making one foolish decision after another; and the filmmakers hiring the charismatic Cliff Curtis so they can relegate him to inconsequential sidekick duty.
The finale flirts with inspiration courtesy of Jonas’ attempts to kill the Megs with homemade explosive harpoons while riding a jet ski, along with a killing-the-bad-guy one-liner that would have been right at home in a ’90s film. No late gestures can salvage this wreck, however, which is ably summed by DJ when he exclaims, “This some dumb-ass shit!”
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