The Meg 2
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris
Starring Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Cliff Curtis
Runtime: 1 hour and 56 minutes
Rated PG-13
In theaters August 4

by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer, Shark Girl

What’s better than one megalodon? Four megalodons! The bad news is that you won’t actually see enough of them in this sequel to The Meg…

Since the first film, Jonas (Jason Statham) and Mac (Cliff Curtis) are still working together, but they’re a sort of eco-warrior team, taking on baddies who pollute the ocean. Jonas is effectively a surrogate father to Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai), whose mother—Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing)—died between the first and second film, though we’re not told how. Jonas also works with Jiuming Zhang (Wu Jing), who funds and participates in research into the trench as a tribute to his sister. He also has, that’s right, a meg in captivity.

The first half of this film is focused on the trench and how the thermocline—a layer of the ocean that is discovered to have concealed the Mariana trench in the first film—is breached enough to get multiple megs through to the surface. It’s not super important once it happens, and the villains are written so thinly that you can see the twists from a mile away. A mole in the team, someone with ulterior motives, and a secret mining mission all come together to lead to an explosion that blows a giant hole in the thermocline.

All of that to say that, by the halfway point, Meg 2 gets way more fun. There are some thrilling sequences and funny scenes that break through, thankfully. There’s a couple on a pedal boat and a POV shot from the meg’s mouth that I found really, really funny. But I thought the first film took a little too long to get fun, and this one is even worse in that regard.

There’s a noticeable tone shift between the separate halves of Meg 2, where it wants to be mostly serious in the first hour and the second half goes balls-to-the-wall. I’m not sure how to reconcile the two parts, but I feel like a good half hour could have been shaved off easily, and the film would have been better for it.

Unfortunately, about two thirds through the movie, I reached the dreaded “sure, that might as well happen” zone. Makeshift bomb harpoons, a giant squid, small dinosaurs infiltrating an island, sure that all might as well happen. Somewhere between the serious half and the silly half, you get lost in the sauce of everything going on. And while it’s fun to giggle about how deeply ridiculous everything is, I feel like a much better sequel was possible.

Some of the effects work is noticeably bad here. While the opening dinosaur scene that’s been featured in the trailers is fun, it probably ate up a lot of time and money that could have been spent elsewhere. In fact, I think the megs look worse in this film than the previous one, which is strange. There are a lot of shark movies that pull off scenes on the ocean floor, but the trench-floor portions of this are not visually up to par.

After the first film was a hit, it seemed like a sequel was a no-brainer. But this movie seems way more interested in showing us Jason Statham in fist fights, bad villain monologues, and basically any creatures other than sharks. As the resident Shark Girl at MovieJawn, I’m disappointed.