Meg 2: The Trench & The Historic Stupidity Of A Prehistoric-Shark Sequel

I love watching trashy creature features on long flights. That’s how I watched The Meg (2018), somewhere over the Atlantic, while a polite German co-passenger got drunk next to me. My logic is that if I see a movie about the depths of this planet from the very top of the planet, maybe it’ll feel more fantastical and distant — and by extension, perhaps I’ll enjoy the lunacy of such stories without any hang-ups. So you can count on me enjoying an airplane thriller in a submarine not named Oceangate.

Unfortunately, my viewing experience of Meg 2: The Trench — the sequel to the big-budget B-movie about a prehistoric shark being more facially expressive than Jason Statham — has unfolded at sea level. So I’m embarrassed to report that the unapologetic stupidity of this film is not fun anymore. The scariest moment occurs when Statham mumbles a bunch of complicated words like “illegal dumping of radioactive waste” with considerable strain. It sounds like one of those verbal puzzles. The megalodons can munch on as many human snacks as they want, but they have nothing on the sheer horror of Hollywood action heroes trying to act.

As the title suggests, Meg 2: The Trench is about an unexplored trench at the bottom of the Pacific. The Mana One gang is back — including newly minted ‘Eco-warrior’ Jonas Taylor (Statham), who now spends his time protecting the water from greedy capitalists in Rambo style — minus Suyin, the pretty Chinese oceanographer whose absence from this sequel is reduced to a footnote of “she died doing what she loved”. Jonas doesn’t grieve, or if he does, we cannot see it; the face stays impressively inert. Suyin has left behind her intrusive daughter Meiying, though, a 14-year-old girl old enough to be a science prodigy and Jonas’ unofficial daughter. She was annoying in the first film, and props to her for maintaining narrative continuity as an annoying teen. 

Suyin is replaced by Jiumung, her estranged brother who has returned from obscurity to lead the family’s conservationist legacy. Jiumung has a meg in captivity named Haiqui, who he insists he has a special connection with. (“She is trained,” the man remarks with no irony.) Anyhow, the here-we-go-again gang decides to test out their new exosuit technology in a trench beyond the ‘thermocline,’ which is the ocean’s version of the Great Beyond. As it turns out, more creatures await them here, the most dangerous being some humans running a rogue mining operation funded by a mysterious billionaire. The megs can take a hike.

If this film were to be demonstrated by a cartoon panel, picture a giant shark standing with its fins folded, rolling its eyes at humans who’re busy destroying themselves. Meg 2 reduces the creature to a series of angry cameos. It neglects the shark until it’s left with no choice but to eat every Southeast Asian tourist in sight. In the meantime, Jonas Taylor and gang are preoccupied with the rich people and smugglers trying to ruin the ecosystem. The result is a movie that forgets to leverage its daftness, despite unleashing some land predators and a frisky mega-octopus in a climax that feels like an unhinged descendant of Jaws’ Amity Island thrills.

Steven Spielberg may have unwittingly endangered sharks by making his 1975 classic, but he has also unwittingly endangered the intellectual evolution of the human race. Decade after decade, Jaws has spawned diminishing B-movie pretenders that have passed off creative bankruptcy as corny homages. I like an idiot fish movie as much as the next creature enthusiast, but even I draw the line at ecological tomfoolery like this. At one point, I was wondering if maybe the megs — whose VFX bodies sort of gave up after a while — need therapy for the indignity of being shafted by the very franchise they were promised to lead.

There are all of two big action set pieces, if one can call them that, in Meg 2. One unfolds in the trench underwater, except it feels like outer space with a few bubbles thrown in for effect. After crashing their submarines, the crew must literally walk three kilometers on the ocean bed to reach an illegal mining station before their oxygen runs out. They may as well be strolling through Central Park in slow-motion. Naturally, all seven cannot survive, but it’s fitting that the Comic Con millennial is bumped off first. Another’s face explodes after the helmet cracks at that depth, but moments later, we see Statham swimming across the bed with a minor nosebleed. The megs swim around him, yearning for attention like a child with abandonment issues.

But the plot is plotty, so once the traitor in their midst is revealed, this person takes off their glasses and speaks in a completely different voice, as most self-respecting villains usually do. Then the action moves to this utopia called Fun Island, where wealthy vacationers are slaughtered not only by the approaching megs but by forest creatures that were apparently just chilling behind the luxury resorts for years while waiting for the movie to come to them. A punchdrunk Jurassic World comes to mind with the sort of gruesome and campy deaths happening in this man vs sad megs vs man vs horny octopus vs deformed dinosaur vs man chaos. That’s not a compliment. It’s not an insult either.

I can imagine Meg 3: The Stench revolving around sharks who abandon the constraints of science-fiction and sprint onto land to become poets and artists. They audition for Statham’s role and get it. And they reminisce about the time they realised they could act better than him — when one of the shark’s eyes dramatically rolled shut in the sequel after being stabbed by a piece of wood that looks like an extension of Statham’s…hands. By the end of all the gloriously dull excitement of this film, a bottle of rum is popped open to numb the shameless franchise cash-grabbing at hand. Meg 2? I need a peg too.