‘Meg 2: The Trench’ Review: Megalodon-Sized Carnage Done Right
Meg 2: The Trench won’t win any The Meg holdouts over. If the first’s family-friendly approach to massive shark carnage and elevated Syfy Channel shlock didn’t resonate, Ben Wheatley’s long-awaited sequel (though you’d be forgiven for thinking the cult horror maestro had nothing to do with what’s on-screen) will likely need to be resuscitated before it even reaches shore. Conversely, if Jason Statham diving into the jaws of an enormous, digital megalodon (three, this time) sounds great, Meg 2: The Trench might be some of the most fun you have at the movies this summer.
Where The Meg uncomfortably culled from its better shark brethren, Meg 2: The Trench is equal parts Deep Blue Sea and The Abyss with a dash of Deep Rising thrown in for good, tentacled measure. Statham returns as Jonas Taylor, a rugged diver still affiliated with the first film’s Mana One. When he isn’t channeling his inner John Wick to intercept open-sea terrorists, he’s stoically involved with scientific endeavors more capitalistic than altruistic. Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing) is killed off-screen, so instead, audiences are treated to Jonas as a surrogate father to the returning Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai). Her uncle Jiuming (Wu Jing) heads this new operation that sees the Mana One team (and some returning faces) using exosuits to traverse the deepest layers of the titular trench.
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Meg 2: The Trench can easily be bisected into two halves. The first, an Underwater-esque survival thriller with our cast trapped on the ocean floor, has some noteworthy jolts. But too often, it recommits to the first’s megalodon-sized sin—not enough shark. Meg 2: The Trench lives or dies by its conceit, though for its first hour, the titular beasts are an afterthought for deep-sea monsters not even worthy of a subtitle. All the while, nondescript extras and supporting players are picked off (some of whom, it’s worth noting, are killed pretty graphically) until, as promised, everyone is back on the surface for some shark-induced carnage.
Meg 2: The Trench finds its footing in its back half of B-movie excess and superfluous logic. This time, three megalodons break free from the trench alongside a giant octopus and several dozen lizard dinosaurs. It’s Komodo with a budget, and while Wheatley never demonstrates any of his trademark style, it’s difficult to scoff at the swirling chaos of an island resort falling prey to the monsters of the past.
Violence is still strictly of the PG-13 variety, but the sheer lunacy of what breathlessly unfolds is exactly what Meg 2: The Trench should be. There are jet-ski stunts, meg-on-octopus battles, and plenty of frightened tourists being picked off one by one by a seemingly endless barrage of creatures. It’s remarkably dumb, though I’d be remiss to call it anything remotely close to a guilty pleasure. That would suggest fortuity and sheer luck. Instead, both the cast and crew know what kind of movie Meg 2: The Trench should be in its home stretch, and they deliver with aplomb.
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Intermittent moments risk audience casualties. The scripted humor rarely works (including a running gag about cosplay), and villain motivations are as nondescript as they come. It’s about money, broadly, though it’s difficult to get a handle on what makes one team innately worse than the other. Everyone, good and bad guy, is disturbing an ancient ecosystem they have no business exploring, though Meg 2: The Trench is only peripherally interested in bigger, Crichton-esque questions of dominion over nature. It would much rather have its shark bait and eat it, too.
In the pantheon of killer sharks flicks (adroitly reviewed in this year’s Sharksploitation documentary), Meg 2: The Trench lands squarely in the middle. While its first half risks alienating what built-in audience this gargantuan shlock fest has left, the latter half is a B-movie delight. Incredulous, toothy, excessive, and sensational all at once, The Trench is worth exploring.
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Meg 2: The Trench
Summary
Meg 2: The Trench is more meg, good, bad, and indifferently. Whether this franchise can sustain the swelling digital carnage remains to be seen, though as an exercise in creature feature excess The Trench delivers.
