‘Meg 2: The Trench’ Chomps Into Even Greater Absurdity but Lacks Real Shark Action

Alci Rengifo

It should be a golden rule that if a movie is named after a particular monster, that monster should be in a large portion of the movie. “Meg 2: The Trench” returns to the premise of the surprise 2018 hit “The Meg,” which fulfilled the action fantasy of pitting Jason Statham against a prehistoric shark or Megalodon. Though not entirely successful, the movie had its moments of absurd charm. A rematch was more than assured. Yet, you might find yourself for most of this follow up wondering where the dino sharks are. The ingredients for a good and bloody ride are in place, from Statham to director Ben Wheatley, a notable visual stylist with a cult following in the indie scene. Instead, one feels the overall reach of the studio, making sure the movie becomes more cliché than inventive.

So it’s been some time since the events of the first movie and Jonas Taylor (Statham) is now some kind of eco-warrior who raids ships that are up to illegal, anti-environmental activities. He also works at an oceanographic institute in Hainan, China. There he works with some returning faces from the last movie, including DJ (Page Kennedy) and James (Cliff Curtis). Jonas is also an adoptive father to Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai), daughter of the now gone love interest from the previous film, Suyin (what happened to Bingbing Li?). The institute happens to have a captive “Meg,” who is used as a pet and guinea pig by billionaire philanthropist Jiuming (Jing Wu), Suyin’s brother. During a submersible expedition past the thermocline and down to an oceanic trench, where other Megs swim around, Jonas, Jiuming and friends confront a gang of illegal miners. Now trapped 3.7 miles below the surface, Jonas needs to lead everyone to safety and past ravenous creatures.

The posters and ads bill “Meg 2” as another monster movie where we expect plenty of chomping, floating viscera and Statham trying his best to keep a shark’s pearly whites from closing in on him and his friends. The goods are not really delivered until deep into the third act. For most of its running time, Wheatley and writers Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber try their best to give us a sleepy corporate thriller. It’s as if they are too afraid to go wild with what’s already a zany premise. Curiously enough, as much flack as shallow action movies get, this one overthinks what it wants to do. As with the first movie, “Meg 2” is adapted from a novel by Steve Alten, “The Trench.” If the plot is the same, the filmmakers should have tossed it. It is done all the time with cases where entirely new climaxes are devised or storylines are expanded. 

Even the pinnacle of this genre, Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” spent most of its quieter, tense moments of human drama focused on the fear of the shark. Popcorn heirs like “Deep Blue Sea” just went crazy with the shark action. At one point, it seems the Megalodons have developed the capacity to plan a breakout for their captive comrade at the institute, but the how never returns to the story. After Jonas and some team members get trapped in the trench, including Meiying to heighten the drama, what follows is one murky action scene involving a few Megs and some prehistoric reptiles that are only down here due to Hollywood conveniently applying what we assume is Darwinian logic. But the sequence is so hazy and the CGI is cloudy, that there’s only clarity when a team member screams upon seeing her hook-up interest from the crew get eaten. Once everyone reaches a safe zone in an underwater structure, the dialogue is peppered with a bit of humor but this is the kind of movie where everything someone will or has to do is said (“come out from under the bridge!”). 

Because Ben Wheatley is directing, the sense of disappointment is greater. For years this has been a unique filmmaker who never shied away from the unsettling and bloody. His indie work includes the hallucinatory “A Field in England,” about deserters seeking gold while accidentally getting high on mushrooms during the English Civil War. His more mainstream films like “High-Rise” feature visual richness with satirical violence. “Meg 2” could have been made by anybody. We sense his presence in the opening scene, a howler set during the Cretaceous period where a Tyrannosaurus Rex meets its fate in the jaws of a Meg leaping out of the ocean. Too quickly the attention goes to Jonas and friends trapped in underwater spaces while a surprise corporate villain cackles about sending the environment to hell. There’s a goon played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta who continues the long tradition of Latino villains who laugh while firing their machine guns, curse in Spanish and shout at Statham about needing to have cojones. 

All of it is bloodless and surprisingly tedious for a story where Statham proves action heroes can still hold their breath for incredible amounts of time. Where, among all this, are the sharks? That question is finally answered in the movie’s superior third act, where Wheatley almost gives in fully to this franchise’s obvious B-movie roots and lets it all go crazy. Though it’s a sudden change in pace, it’s also a relief when the material suddenly becomes aware of its own self and suddenly in-jokes are thrown around, DJ out of nowhere becomes a scene-stealing wannabe action hero and mayhem breaks out at a picturesque swimming getaway. Finally a few Megs emerge, with Jason Statham even doing an Ahab, harpoon in hand, riding a wave and aiming it at the prehistoric beast. Sadly, if you saw the first “Meg,” this might sound like a repeat of the way that movie ended and in a way, it is. A few new action devices are included such as mercenaries, people diving from bags full of TNT-like material and the deranged Latino villain. But the rest is pretty much a recycle, with a new cute pet dog to swim around the water avoiding the big shark. 

Overall there’s even less blood in “Meg 2.” It’s true that too many movies use gratuitous violence without rhyme or reason, but here there’s a constant feeling of the material being held back. There are plenty of more novels in Steve Alten’s series, so we can presume Warner Bros. will move on to the next one if “Meg 2” proves to be a big hit. If so, they really just need to follow the simple idea of sticking to the main attraction. A perfectly good grindhouse thriller can be made with an environmentalist message, while giving Statham the chance to do his clenched jaw poses and utter ridiculously entertaining one-liners. It’s almost a crime to be boring when your premise is a cult action star taking on a prehistoric creature. “Meg 2” should have been the good kind of bad. Instead it slumbers at the beginning, delivers a wild third act and finally washes ashore already gutted.

“Meg 2: The Trench” releases Aug. 4 in theaters nationwide.