The Meg

I knew exactly what to expect from The Meg as there’s no hiding its ridiculous embracement of the B-movie genre. I mean, just look at the trailers and you’ll instantly know the kind of boat you’re getting into. Despite all this I was still disappointed by the film. It’s a joyless creature feature that bites off more than it can chew, and that’s saying a lot given we’re dealing with a megalodon here.

Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is a former rescue diver who quit the business after he lost members of his team during a rescue mission that was over 10,000ft deep. He claims there was something in the depths that forced him to abandon the dive early, but no one believes him. Five years later, and Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing) and a group of fellow scientists are researching the bottom of the Mariana Trench when their sub is attacked by an unknown creature and becomes trapped. The team brings in a reluctant Jonas for the rescue, but by venturing into the uncharted depths, they’ve awaken a gigantic shark of ancient proportions that is now free to roam the oceans.

On its surface, The Meg looks like it could be a fun B-movie that embraces its ridiculous premise, much like the Sharknado franchise, but the film ends up in this awkward middle ground where it’s far from good enough and nowhere near bad enough to be entertaining. It’s just plain bad. The acting and dialogue are terrible. Statham is perfectly fine when it’s throwing fists or delivering badass one-liners, but having him pilot a rescue sub for nearly two hours is exhaustingly dull. He does have some cool moments in which he goes hand-to-fin with the megalodon, but by that point I was just ready for the movie to be over.

The Meg’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It tries to fit in this romance between Statham and Bingbing’s characters that just doesn’t work. There’s also the obnoxious Jack Morris, played by Rainn Wilson, who is the tech billionaire who funded the whole operation. He’s the cocky guy who just has to insert his own two words into every conversation and the one you actively root for the shark to eat first. There’s humor in the film too, but you’ll rarely laugh.

I was hopeful for fun shark movie but rather than embrace its B-movie status, The Meg takes everything too seriously. In the end, it’s just another generic monster movie that isn’t worth your time or money.