Director – Ben Wheatley, Screenplay – Dean Georgaris, Erich Hoeber & Jon Hoeber, Based on the Novel The Trench by Steve Alten, Producers – Belle Avery & Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Photography – Haris Zambarloukos, Music – Harry Gregson-Williams, Visual Effects Supervisor – Pete Bebb, Visual Effects – Cheap Shot, Craft Creations Shanghai (Supervisor – Dennis Yeung), DNeg (Supervisor – David Lee), Milk Visual Effects Limited (Supervisor – Neil Roche) & Scanline VFX (Supervisors – Roland Langschwert & Sue Rowe), Special Effects Supervisor – Dominic Tuohy, Production Design – Chris Lowe. Production Company – di Bonaventura/Apelles Entertainment, Inc./Onaroll Productions.
Jonas Taylor returns to Mana One and conducts a dive down into the Mariana Trench in a submersible. Jonas finds that his stepdaughter Meiying has stowed away aboard. They enter the thermocline only to discover that someone has set up an illegal mining operation in a habitat there. Discovered, the project’s head Montes detonates mining explosives, burying the submersible. Jonas is forced to lead the survivors to safety in a walk across the ocean floor. However, the explosion has stirred up more megalodon sharks and other prehistoric life. They also discover that the mission was sabotaged by their backer Hillary Driscoll. Returning to the surface, they then find that the megalodons and other giant prehistoric lifeforms are heading towards the nearby resort of Fun Island, devouring everything in their path.
The killer shark film has become its own genre ever since Jaws (1975). There were a host of B-budget copies of Jaws made from the 1970s through the 2000s. The genre took off in a big way in the late 2000s with efforts such as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009) and in particular Sharknado (2013) and sequels. During this time, the killer shark film gravitated into the arena of the deliberately ridiculous with many of these films attempting to combine sharks with as unlikely or incongruous mash-ups as possible. For a more detailed listing see Killer Shark Films.
While all of the other killer sharks of this period were conducted on low- or no-budgets, The Meg (2018) was one surprise among these. It was a killer shark film not taking itself seriously but conducted on a $130 million budget and featuring A-list name stars like Jason Statham. This is a sequel. The original was based on a 1997 novel by Steve Alten. Alten released seven book sequels and Meg 2: The Trench very loosely adapts the first of Alten’s sequels The Trench (1999).
The great surprise about the sequel is the choice of director in Ben Wheatley. The British-born Wheatley has gained a cult following. He first appeared with the crime film Down Terrace (2008) and his reputation took off with his next film Kill List (2011). Wheatley went on to make the U is for Unearthed episode of The ABCs of Death (2012), Sightseers (2012), A Field in England (2013), the J.G. Ballard adaptation High Rise (2015), Free Fire (2016), his remake of Rebecca (2020) and In the Earth (2011). Wheatley has also produced Aaaaaaaah! (2015), The Ghoul (2016), The Greasy Strangler (2016) and In Fabric (2018).
The Meg movies are really no more than films from The Asylum – the makers of the Sharknado, Mega Shark series and a host of others – having been given multi-million dollar budgets. Indeed, as the group ventures down into the thermocline and monsters start emerging, I was trying to remember which Asylum film the same plot featured in – one of their Megalodon films. Indeed, we even get a meg against a giant octopus at one point, seemingly in homage to The Asylum’s original gonzo killer shark film Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. The script wields all the clichés of the genre – a young kid along for the journey, a treacherous businessperson who is attempting to exploit resources in the region, a holiday resort under threat. The whole journey across the ocean floor on the bottom of the Mariana Trench is undeniably reminiscent of Underwater (2020).
Jason Statham fights off the megalodon on a jetty
Expectedly, there are a good many issues of basic plausibility. The worst of these come in the underwater scenes. The way Ben Wheatley shoots them, it doesn’t even look as though the cast are on the ocean floor – more as though they are out for a stroll in spacesuits. Moreover, the seabed in what is supposedly the deepest part of the ocean is absurdly lit up like a fairytale grotto of colours. In one of the most absurd moments, Jason Statham ventures out without even a suit, merely holding his breath, in order to open an airlock door. In reality, at 25,000 feet underwater (as the screen captions tell us), the equivalent of 4.7 miles down, there would be nearly eight tons of pressure being exerted for every square inch and Statham would be no more than raspberry jam, as would the rest of the group as soon as they venture out in their diving suits. (In real life, the deepest an individual has ever free dived unaided ie. without breathing gear is 800 feet).
The scenes underwater are neither here nor there. However, Meg 2 finally comes into its own during the last three quarters of an hour set at the Fun Island resort. It is here that Wheatley, Statham and co realise they are making a dumb, stupid film and decided what the heck, they might as well make the kind of dumb, stupid film that will out Michael Bay Michael Bay himself – the film is, after all, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura who is behind all of the Transformers films. The thing about this is that Ben Wheatley is actually a smart filmmaker making a dumb movie as opposed to Bay who seems unable to make anything else. You cannot help but feel that it is Wheatley batting well below his grade. It is kind of like James Cameron or Steven Spielberg lending their prodigious talent to making a low-budget Syfy Channel disaster or monster movie.
The film seems to have operated on the principle of having something absurdly over-the-top happening every few minutes. This latter section is filled with ridiculous set-pieces. Boats and their crews are swallowed whole. We get meg point-of-view scenes shot from inside the shark’s mouth as it swims along sweeping swimmers up like a giant scoop. Giant octopus tentacles appear snatching people up and even dragging a helicopter down. Jason Statham flees along a jetty as a meg races along behind him devouring the entire pier. In one sequence, we have characters trying to refuel a helicopter while it is in mid-air trying to take off and under attack by dinosaurs.
In one of the more entertaining scenes, Jason Statham rides a jet ski into attack against a megalodon, surfing a mini-tsunami towards it while aiming a makeshift explosive spear. At one point, Statham is having a showdown with bad guy Sergio Peris Mencheta and simply kicks him off the jetty into the mouth of a meg that handily surfaces behind him, while delivering an Arnold Schwarzenegger worthy pun “See you later, chum.” At another point, Statham wields a blade from the downed helicopter, which makes him look for all the world like an anime hero wielding a sword three times the size he is, and uses it to impale a meg that leaps through the air towards him.
