MEG 2: THE TRENCH

You have bad movies. You have inept movies. And then there is this god-awful sequel, which doesn't try to tell a coherent story or make you care about characters. Avoid at all costs!

In general I try to avoid Jason Statham movies (they seldom rise above the level of quick, cheap cash grab) but I kinda enjoyed 2017 creature feature The Meg, which was no Jaws but still proved to be entertaining popcorn fodder.

Sequel Meg 2: The Trench is a different beast altogether unfortunately. A prehistoric prologue suggests plenty of tongue-in-cheek fun to come but that hope is dashed mere minutes later. From the uninspired set-pieces to the barely coherent underwater sequences and the laughable dialogue, Meg 2 gives Jaws 4 a run for its money as worst ever cinematic creature feature sequel.

Indicative of how little thought went into making the movie, Meg 2 dispatches of secondary characters with as much shoulder-shrugging disdain as I have ever seen on the big screen. If the filmmakers don't even care about these people, why would the general audience do so?

Further dragging the picture down (pun intended) is a new 'big bad' creature, a giant octopus from the depths of the ocean, whose climatic battle with the titular prehistoric shark is one of the most underwhelming things I've ever witnessed in this kind of film.

The disappointments in Meg 2: The Trench are to numerous to mention to be honest, but perhaps the biggest is that Ben Wheatley directed it. The British helmer, who started out so brilliantly with subversive, surprising films like Kill List and Sightseers, here becomes the ultimate vanilla director-for-hire. What a sad fate will befall him now he has this god-awful sequel on his resumé!

release: 2023

director: Ben Wheatley

starring: Jason Statham, Jing Wu, Sophia Cai, Cliff Curtis