5 years in the past, Jason Statham met a shark. Truly, a number of sharks, and really large ones. They have been referred to as megalodons, prehistoric creatures who had secretly been dwelling in an undiscovered ecosystem beneath a deep-sea thermocline. The results of Statham’s rendezvous with these beasts was the topic of the 2018 movie The Meg, an try at dumb late-summer enjoyable that wasn’t dumb sufficient.
So Statham is returning to the light-starved waters (which, by the way, have not too long ago featured prominently in tragic world information) for a second try at charming us. Meg 2: The Trench (in theaters August 5) tries to tweak the system whereas broadening its purview. Issues work a bit higher this time.
One downside with the primary movie, directed by Jon Turteltaub, was that it didn’t do sufficient exploring of the unusual biome teeming on the backside of the Mariana Trench. As the brand new movie’s subtitle suggests, extra time will likely be spent in that ominous expanse, sending Statham’s marine rescuer-cum-environmental activist Jonas Taylor into the depths for some sort of big animal journey. The movie delivers on that promise, introducing us to a few new species and merrily flouting just about all the pieces we find out about oceanography.
Within the years for the reason that first megs have been found, the character performed by Li Bingbing has died by some means, leaving her daughter, Meiying (Sophia Cai), within the care of Jonas and Meiying’s uncle, Juming (Wu Jing). She’s a precocious 14-year-old desperate to comply with in her guardians’ footsteps. Thus she stows away on a routine mission previous the thermocline, the place, in fact, issues go unsuitable. Becoming a member of these three are your common assemblage of random crimson shirts, whereas Cliff Curtis’s Mac and Web page Kennedy’s DJ, returning to the franchise, watch from the floor.
What follows the submersible calamity is a mixture of animal mayhem and human risk; Jonas discovers a grasping conspiracy that units him towards folks he thought have been colleagues, all culminating in a person vs. man vs. deep-sea creature melee at a resort referred to as Enjoyable Island. That madcap finale is paying homage to the one within the first movie, solely with the amount (and the cleverness) turned as much as a extra delirious blare.
That’s credit score largely to Ben Wheatley, a British director finest recognized (or finest favored) because the director of gonzo crime motion pictures like Excessive Rise and Free Fireplace. Wheatley has, in recent times, swerved from the surrealist Sundance horror film Within the Earth to Netflix’s drab Rebecca adaptation, showcasing the director’s admirably discursive style if not his acumen. He’s a greater match for the ludicrous climes of Meg 2, the place he will get to fiddle with physics and deal with characters like weightless rag dolls blessedly liberated from any sense of actual stakes.
He makes the film enjoyable, primarily, extra deserving of its smirks and winks than the primary movie ever was. Meg 2 is assured in its schlock, piling on one ridiculous conceit after one other at such a tempo that the viewers can’t assist however be swept up in it. That could be a tougher needle to string than many filmmakers appear to assume—it’s not sufficient to only be silly.
My screening viewers maybe hooted most loudly at a second when a personality explains, in pseudo-scientific phrases, how an unprotected human might survive for a minute or two within the insane strain of the ocean ground. I’m pretty sure it’s all nonsense, however the film brashly does it anyway, after which strikes on to the subsequent factor earlier than we’ve actually had an opportunity to name bullshit. There’s an odd gracefulness to that sort of moxie, whereas such issues performed sweatily within the first movie.
Possibly that’s as a result of the unique Meg was nonetheless attempting, somewhat bit, to be cool. How might it not with such a suave buyer like Statham on the middle? This generally is a downside in these post-Quick and Livid occasions of ours, a confusion in regards to the steadiness between action-star swagger and the goofy theatrics of the film surrounding him. (And it’s often a him.) Ironic appreciation has change into self-conscious in a means that usually undermines the intent. Meg 2 straightens a few of that out, extra earnestly courting guffaws and hoots of appreciation with out attempting to strike any “however truly we’re fairly superior” poses. Statham, in that regard, provides a refreshingly humble efficiency—he even lets himself fall off a jet ski.
This isn’t to say that Meg 2 is nice. It’s a fleeting, forgettable time on the motion pictures, which can qualify as sufficient for some moviegoers seeking to soak in some high-blast air-conditioning and get queasy from popcorn butter grease. However these feeling extra discerning, particularly within the wake of Barbie and Oppenheimer’s bespoke blockbuster experiences, would most likely do higher to observe Meg 2 half-asleep on an airplane certain for Enjoyable Island, dreaming of killer octopi.
