Meg 2: The Trench (2023) had all the potential to solidify The Meg franchise’s place among monster franchises. The key word being “had”, as this film was just a plain disappointment. In the very paradoxical sense, the only consistent aspect of this film was its inconsistency. 

This film starts up several years after The Meg (2018) with our protagonist, Jonas Taylor  (Jason Statham), having an unspecified leadership role with an ocean institute dedicated to protecting and preserving the oceans. In addition to Jonas, the ocean institute boasts a collection of characters. These characters are truly unmemorable and provide next to no depth. However, just to give them their due credit, the other characters we see include Jiuming Zhang (Wu Jing), the institute’s director and sister to Suyin, the now deceased female lead from The Meg and Jonas’s late wife; Meiying Zhang (Shuya Sophia Cai), Suyin’s teenager daughter, Jonas’s step-daughter who boasts a curiosity into the ocean; Mac (Cliff Curtis), Jonas’s best friend and an operations manager for the institute; DJ (Page Kennedy), another friend of Jonas who encountered the megalodon with him in the prior film and now works for the institute; Rigas (Melissanthi Mahut), another officer for the institute and friend of Jonas; and Jess (Skyler Samuels), a communication officer for the institute with unknown intentions. On top of this, the entire operation is financed by Hillary Discroli (Sienna Guillory), who is, to no surprise, an evil billionaire.

The movie starts with a glimpse into the past 65 million years ago as we see a Tyrannosaurus Rex hunt down amphibious dinosaurs in the water, which just seems inaccurate in every way. When the Tyrannosaurus Rex finally catches a meal, he throws it up in the air only to have a Megalodon come out of the water and snatch up the T-Rex and his meal whole. 

The movie fast forwards to the present day to show Jonas Taylor infiltrating a corrupt cargo ship that’s dumping hilariously labeled toxic waste into the ocean. The audience follows Jonas Taylor as he, by the movie’s own admission, performs “James Bond” feats. After watching Jonas perform espionage, the movie finally moves on to the ocean institute where we learn that Suyin, Jonas’s wife and Meiying’s mother, has now died although we are given no reason as to why or how she died. The story presents Meiying as a curious kid who wants to join Jonas and her uncle in their work, their highly dangerous work. Meiying’s fascination with their work is so strong that she isn’t even deterred when her uncle is almost killed by the institute’s pet megalodon right in front of her. This fascination, of course, causes her to stow away on Jonas and Jiuming’s next diving expedition – which turns out to be the wrong decision, surprise surprise.

The next major movement in the film comes with this diving expedition where a group of two submarines go underwater to map the area discovered in the first film – a time capsule of flora and fauna protected from the surface by a thermocline that acts as a natural barrier for the creatures below. As Jonas and the team begin to dive, they find that the institute’s pet megalodon has escaped through the conveniently megalodon-sized vent in her tank. Fearing for their lives, they retreat down below where they inexplicably discover an entire illegal mining operation. 

This operation is seemingly right below the institute’s operating rig and it seems it would be impossible to build down there without detection, but that idea is just ignored and not even handwaved with some flimsy excuse. The protagonists just don’t care to question the facility beyond the initial shock. Anyway, one of the antagonists, a man named Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) sees Jonas and the team and decides to go ahead and blow up the miners so there’s no evidence of the illegal operation. Through this action, every sub in the trench, including Montes’, is brought to the ocean floor.

From here, the plot forces Jonas and his team to walk in armored dive suits along the ocean floor to make it to the illegal mining facility, their only hope of reaching the surface again. This sequence is genuinely interesting as the movie showcases some terrifying and colorful flora and fauna on the seafloor. There’s an aura of dread from the characters walking in the ocean, not knowing what creatures lurk beneath, similar to Underwater (2020). After several redshirts are taken out, the remaining characters finally make it to the mining facility and discover the truth behind the operation when Jess and Hillary Driscoll video chat in and reveal their generic corporate evilness to Jonas and the gang. 

Hillary and Jess trap the protagonists in the facility, causing Jonas to swim outside and open a hatch in the water. Jonas, a regular man with no superpowers, swims in crushing underwater pressure and lives to tell the tale. The timing of this movie’s release really coincides well with being in the same year the entire world was educated on ocean pressure from an international submarine incident. This movie looks at real-world physics and says “No thank you” in the same vein as the Fast and Furious franchise, aptly also starring Jason Statham.

The second half of the movie is really just a blur – which is a higher compliment than I can give the first half because the first half is really just a slog. The second half of the movie sees Montes, for no apparent reason, having a relationship with Jess. This is revealed in a single scene about a minute before Jess gets eaten by a Meg, so it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Montes never even mentions Jess beyond a brief mourning moment. Jonas, Jiuming, Meiying, and Rigas make it to the surface where they rendezvous with Mac and DJ, who have been avoiding Hillary and Jess’s militia. Once the entire group is reunited, they discover that the Megs, along with a few other creatures, have left the trench and are aiming to wreak havoc. After killing some of the militia, the Megs and the other creatures all seemingly set their sights on the same nearby island – funnily titled “Fun Island”. 

Finally, the movie reaches the part that most people came to see – giant sharks going ballistic and eating people. They even throw in a giant octopus and some amphibian dinosaurs as extra-killing machines. At a certain point, the audience has to wonder whether these animals have bottomless stomachs. This mindless violence and carnage is a primal entertainment that we, as an audience, have come to expect from these big-budget monster movies. The massive buffet the movie presents is all compounded by Jonas’s attempts to destroy the Megs with make-shift bomb harpoons. At the same time, Jiuming and Meiying take care of a giant octopus. A small note with the giant octopus is that no one in the movie really acknowledges the creature – there is not a single moment where someone seems in awe or terror by the fact that there is a giant octopus, Kraken-like creature in addition to three Megs. Additionally, a group on land has to take care of the amphibious dinosaurs, who somehow have traveled from the depths of the trench to Fun Island and still have legs after 65 million years.

All three groups eventually succeed in destroying their respective monsters of nature, bar one apparently trained Meg, and Jonas successfully kills a relentless Montes and delivers the only satisfying one-liner of the entire movie. The movie ends with our characters relaxing on the beach discussing how the single surviving Meg might be pregnant, all but shouting the term “sequel bait”. 

In the end, this movie is really just all over the place. The film’s inconsistency should not come as a surprise, however, its flaws are somewhat surprising given that Ben Wheatley was behind the camera. Ben Wheatley, who has directed quite a slew of interesting smaller-budget films, took a foray into the big-budget, and really it just seems like his skill could not save this. 

There are a plethora of issues with this film, and there are truly too many to list succinctly. The emotional core of the film is Jonas and his fatherly relationship with Meiying, although there really feels like there is no growth. Jiuming seems like he should be given more to work with, especially since he and Jonas seem to regard one another as equals, but it feels like Jiuming was put on the back burner in the third act. This movie pulls a Jurassic World (2015) and has Jiuming apparently train a megalodon, although this is never fully confirmed. The mining subplot feels very unresolved and more like a generic device to put our characters in danger when the Megs aren’t around. All of the villains were killed unceremoniously and without any real impact. 

As a final note, this is a hard film to recommend, although it does present a modicum of entertainment. This is only a great film for those with Regal Unlimited or AMC A-List who might want to make their subscriptions worth it in the month of August.

Review Courtesy of Tate Fowler

Feature Image via Warner Bros