Horror specialist Ben Wheatley’s Meg 2: The Trench is essentially a rehash of the giant monster shenanigans in 2018’s The Meg. It is exactly what its trailer leads you to expect: The prehistoric megalodon shark is back—along with its kinfolk—and they wreak havoc and devour a lot of people. It’s the definition of a big, dumb summer popcorn movie.
Jason Statham returns as rescue diver Jonas (get it?), now working as a “green James Bond,” who exposes environmental criminals at sea. Working with entrepreneur Jiuming (Wu Jing), Jonas joins a team headed into the titular Mariana Trench, where they discover not only enormous Meg sharks and other prehistoric monsters, but an illicit mining operation. When an explosion damages their submersibles, they must don high-tech diving suits and wind their way through shark-infested waters to the mining facility. From there, double-crosses, kung fu fights, and giant creature attacks steadily ensue, culminating in gargantuan sharks chowing down at a comically cheerful island resort.
There is nothing new here. Meg 2 is a mélange of Jaws, The Abyss, Jurassic Park, Alien, and The Land That Time Forgot, and isn’t remotely as good as any of them. Its tone is somewhere between a milder Chuck Norris actioner and a Japanese kaiju movie. It could pass for a live-action version of a 1980s action figure tie-in cartoon series that never existed. Wheatley directs Meg 2 as it was intended to be: As smoothly, cleanly manufactured as a Hostess Twinkie and about as nourishing. But Twinkies have their place and, for what it is, Meg 2 is innocuous enough.
It’s hard to actively praise a hollow, impersonal movie like this. The characters are two-dimensional and the dialogue is mostly at a coloring-book level. There are a few striking moments, and some genuinely funny bits, mostly involving comic relief technician D.J. (Page Kennedy). The movie’s real stars are its cast of CG creatures: the Megs, “Snapper” lizards, man-eating eels, and a giant squid. These hungry beasts and some intriguing bioluminescent deep-sea plants steal the show, along with Pippin the dog, returning from the first Meg.
Decades ago, ludicrous movies like this would have been made by the Shaw Brothers or Toho at a tiny fraction of Meg 2’s budget, and would have far excelled it in both silliness and charm. And, more importantly, they would lack self-awareness. Meg 2 has a dull, assembly-line feeling, devoid of spontaneity, because every frame of it has been calculated to maximize profits and minimize the filmmaker’s individuality. It’s a cynical approach to moviemaking, and a major reason why so many current movies are homogeneous and predictable.
For viewers familiar with Wheatley’s earlier work, Meg 2 is considerably less graphic than his Kill List and A Field in England. The accent here is on silly, somewhat gruesome thrills, not skin-crawling viciousness. The fact that it is so CG-driven also muffles most scares.
If viewers want simple-minded, passable summer fare, they won’t be disappointed by Meg 2. But there are plenty of man-eating fish and prehistoric monster movies that far outclass this one. Meg 2 may be the shallowest movie ever made about the planet’s lowest depths.
Meg 2: The Trench
PG-13, 116 minutes
Alamo Cinema Drafthouse, Regal Stonefield, Violet Crown Cinema