Meg 2 The Trench Movie Review: Jason Statham’s Shark Flick is a Dumb and Bombastic Mess (LatestLY Exclusive)

Meg 2 The Trench Movie Review: Meg 2: The Trench is shockingly uninteresting for a movie with three giant sharks. Being boring is the worst crime a creature movie can do, which is unfortunately the case with this sequel to 2018's dumb fun The Meg. It's a lot of "dumb" that is padded out with a ridiculous plot that never makes apt utilisation of its titular monster and lacks a unique flair – which, honestly, disappointed me. Meg 2: The Trench Trailer: Jason Statham Returns with His Team to Fight Three Giant Sharks.

Directed by Ben Wheatley, Meg 2: The Trench brings in more teeth this time around as Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) and team dive down deep into the Mariana Trench for an exploration trip only to find more megs and an illegal mining operation. Once the hole on the surface of the trench is blown, the creatures beneath escape and Taylor must once again contain the situation before it gets worse.

I wasn’t that big on the first Meg, but I chalked it off to being dumb fun. That's all you kind of need in a Shark movie, and it had the goofy fun you found in creature features like Anaconda and Lake Placid. Meg 2: The Trench has none of that. It trades in the large-scale action of The Meg for a first-half claustrophobic drama akin to Kristen Stewart's Underwater, but conveniently forgets to establish a frightening atmosphere.

Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor again remains the best part of the film, but even his action hero persona can’t uplift this mess. Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy and Sophia Cai return from the first film as Mac, DJ and Meiying respectively, and they are as good as they were in Meg. This time they are also joined by Wu Jing as Jiuming, Meiying’s uncle, and even he is fine enough. The issue however lies in how their characters are written, because none of them even have an arc over here. They are just there in the film to fight the big sharks.

Watch the Trailer:

Meg 2: The Trench also has a side-plot about an illicit mining operation that is going on deep within the Mariana Trench, but it feels forced in. The movie simply runs into a wall there as the concept itself wants to discuss how we abuse the Earth's resources, all of which is overseen by an overly comical villain. It appears to have been included merely to create conflict, oblivious to the fact that there are three enormous sharks around which you could base an entire story.

When Meg 2: The Trench even remembers that it has sharks in it – you know, the namesake monsters on which the movie is based – it quickly turns into a Kaiju flick which was what I really wanted from this movie; and it just delivers on that in its third act. This is where the dumb fun of the movie kicks in and Meg 2: The Trench finds itself at its most enjoyable, however, it's just too little and too late. Meg 2–The Trench Trailer: Jason Statham and His Team are Back to Take Down a Fearsome Extinct Shark (Watch Video).

All they had to do was just make a bigger and fun version of the first film, and somehow even that was messed up. Had Meg 2: The Trench just been about its core selling point, this would have been a way better film.

Final Thoughts

Meg 2: The Trench is as big of a disappointment as the creatures it displays on-screen. The third act is somewhat engaging thanks to a charismatic Jason Statham and a few major monster fights, but the first and second acts are drab and lack the joy of a creature movie. Meg 2: The Trench is playing in theatres right now.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 03, 2023 08:07 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).