REVIEW: Meg 2 The Trench

 There are some movies that aim for greatness. Then there are some movies that plan to land solidly in B movie status. Meg 2: The Trench aims to land down in B-rated giant CGI monster territory but fails to stick the landing and stumbles clear into D range. 

The film picks up several years after the events of the first. Following the off-screen death of Jason Statham’s love interest, our protagonist is managing to balance being a dad while also raising his now 14-year-old daughter. A standard trope of the modern era ensues: tough guy has a daughter who doesn’t listen and ends up riding shotgun on some death-defying journey.

The film is weirdly paced with a lot of the action you came for crammed into the last 30 minutes as opposed to the formula of the last film. Audiences came to this feature primed, lubed, and ready to get “megged” just to be taken on a journey involving secret undersea bases and rogue seafloor mining operations. 

The visuals for a lot of the movie are not anything spectacular, with our host of undersea creatures mostly being obscured by CGI wakes and bubbles. When the plot finally turns to something more familiar (ie., megs eating tourists), you quickly see why. A lot of the creature models are only shown in bits and pieces, while the ones you see in their entirety have the CGI quality of a Syfy original.

Aside from the visuals, the plot of the movie is paper thin, full of tropes and dubious scientific justification for outlandish plot points. 

The movie has enjoyed a better release in the Chinese markets than domestically for reasons obvious to all those who watch it. It’s nice to see a cultural export of cheaply made broken products moving in the other direction. 

Meg 2 jumps the shark. 4 turds out of 5.