The Meg is no Jaws, nor is it a Sharknado. It falls somewhere in the in-between with a dash of deep-sea exploration from The Abyss, a ripe amount of The Shallows tension and just enough of the campiness of a film like Piranhas to get you laughing in your seat at the sight of a person being eaten alive by a 80 foot CGI shark.
It’s a fun flick that quickly descends into uncharted territory as a marine exploration group defies physics, somehow managing to send a crew without imploding thousands and meters down into the marinas trench. Past what was believed to be the ocean floor but turns out to be just a hydrogen cloud layer separating the world as we know it from prehistoric life we were unaware of… did I say separating or protecting?
After something attacks the vessel down below, rescue operations take shape, including sending the retired rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) into action, where he’s vindicated in someway, as in an earlier scene talked about abandoning men on a submarine years back due to what he believed as a Megalodon attack.
How that sub, above the freezing layer of Hydrogen Gas was attacked by the Megalodon is beyond me because after saving 2 of the 3 trapped marine explorers, their vessel explodes puncturing an escape route through the hydrogen layer for this massive animal, but hey, this is The Meg and we came to see this beast on the loose.
It’s not necessarily a feeding frenzy for The Meg as she cast her destruction on deep-sea shark fin poachers and other small vessels. Basically we’re getting a Jaws recreation as an often times shirtless Statham and his partner/love interest Suyin (Bingbing Li) try tracking down the monster and destroying it before it’s direction takes it to more populated waters. And yes they have a bigger boat this time around.
Part of me wishes to see more of the monstrous carnage here but the film oddly enough dials back the grotesques horror and instead concentrates more on the what-lies-beneath thrill as our heroes try their best to encounter, retreat then attack the massive beast.
That game plan sets up for its payoff toward the climax of the film as The Meg does finally venture toward the highly populated tourist areas of Sanya Bay. With teeth the size of oars and a bite that can swallow dozens at a time, filmmaker John Turteltaub plays on our expectations of mass causalities yet doesn’t fully give into the horror we all expect, keeping that PG-13 rating fully intact.
Personally I would have rather seen Eli Roth’s (Hostel, Cabin Fever) interpretation of The Meg, as he was originally slated to direct before creative differences lead the production to go with Turteltaub (3 Ninjas, National Treasure).
All in all, it’s a dumb yet entertaining summer film you can really sink your teeth into… (get it… campy).
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