Meg 2: The Trench Review

Megalodon, the 75-feet prehistoric shark species, returns to the screen. This time, in tow, are other fantastically ugly creatures from the bowels of the oceans: a truck-sized octopus, and voracious alligator-like chimeras.

During a deep-sea exploration trip by the notorious Meg-hunter Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), these underwater monstrosities escape the deep-sea barrier known as the Thermocline and make their way to the surface. But thanks to Taylor's uncanny ability to kick a Meg in its teeth and harpoon it right between its eyes, humanity lives another day.

If The Meg (2018) was an unimaginative Man vs. Beast film, then Meg 2 is an equally unimaginative sequel. And being a sequel, it is so much worse. Megalodons are no longer a novelty. Watching a Meg creep up toward a glass wall - the money shot of the first film - is a tired trick in this sequel. And there's little to make up.

While the premise seems to have a lot going on, it gets watered down in favor of CGI tricks. An intriguing setup about a megalodon "pup" named Haiqi, who is captured and trained by the Oceanic Institute where Taylor now works, is only superficially explored. An illegal mining operation in the Trench only yields a pesky villain Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), who shows up at the most inconvenient times to unload bullets into Taylor.

Indeed, while I'm glad the movie didn't launch into a lecture about humanity's foolish ambitions to tame the wild, Meg 2 is totally unserious about everything. It is distinctly goofier than the first film. People get killed, but that's okay because these people are extraneous characters - as in, "let's introduce a guy and give him a cute character detail - say, that he loves comic books - only to have him in the jaws of a giant octopus two minutes later". And except in a few scenes where Page Kennedy's comedy finds its mark, the lighthearted tone of the movie feels wrong. Are we, or are we not, supposed to take these creatures seriously? Each character seems to have interpreted the vibe of the story differently. Jason Statham brings characteristic British charm and gravity, but when his character fashions a harpoon out of scrap and sets off on a jetski to kill three Megs (6 ft man versus 225 ft of Big Fish), it all feels a bit too silly.

The graphics are a muddied mess - particularly during the underwater sequences where Taylor's team, fitted with exoskeletons, gets attacked by a band of gators. The giant octopus is never fully visible - we only see tentacles grabbing at terrified beachgoers.

I know Megalodons are supposed to be the enemy, but the stupidly shallow characters that populate Meg 2 made me root for the Big Fish. I dearly hope that in the next installment, the underwater megafauna evolves two opposable thumbs, lobs nukes at the beach, and puts an end to this series.