Meg 2: The Trench: Movie Review

Cast: Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Skyler Samuels and Cliff Curtis
Director: Ben Wheatley

The latest outing from The Meg series is a film of two halves.

But depressingly, the film's second half shows you what an immensely fun experience Meg 2 could have been if it didn't require mountains of muddied and muddled set-up in its first mind-numbingly tedious hour.

Statham returns as Jonas Taylor, who's now an eco-warrior (a green James Bond as one wag dubs him early on). Called back by old pals Mac (Curtis, relaxed and charming and game to embrace the potential silliness) and DJ (Kennedy, here for the quips and action tropes) to a research institute run by Jiuming Zhang (Jing, wooden), Taylor finds himself soon fighting for his life and everyone around him when corporate espionage opens up a trench deep under the water and lets loose more Meg-induced creature chaos.

There's an inherent silliness to the story here which would have served Meg 2 better had it been embraced early on.

Instead, viewers are subjected to a hook, line and stinker set up of murky and muddily executed CGI as Taylor and pals become trapped deep under water and have to hike 3km to safety in a deserted base. Early scenes are too dark to be engaging, water threats to confined to jump scares and obvious jolts - it's more hokey than horrific.

Things take a turn when a triptych of Meg are threatening local paradise hotspot Fun Island.

It's here director Wheatley finally settles on what the audience has come for - dumb, blockbuster creature-led fun that sees the typically wooden Stath hurtling across the waves on a jetski to save people, Kaiju-like creatures doing their best Jaws impression, and bizarrely throwing in elements of Jurassic Park to provide "terror." (A great shot of those being chomped from inside the Meg's mouth shows the creativity Wheatley has and almost proves worthy of enduring the whole 2 hour affair.)

Perhaps that's the problem with Meg 2 - its reliance on humans to provide the depth that the audience needs and failing so miserably. Statham does what he always does in these films, dispatching both absurd one-liners and pithy comments with the emotional depth of someone who's had their face severely Botox'd - but it's not enough to make Meg 2 fully bearable.

Meg 2: The Trench isn't exactly dead in the water, but it's frustratingly flawed and not smart enough to realise dumbing down is really what the series needs - it's exactly why the Sharknado series thrived. That was astute enough to realise what its parameters were - the Meg series, despite concerning itself with prehistoric creatures, has yet to even undergo a basic evolution to endear itself to its audience.

It's less shark tale, more shark fail.