Zia Willits

If you’re looking for a movie to put you to sleep, look no further as the Meg-2 is your perfect match. Following the 2018 release of the Meg, the Meg 2: The Trench released in theaters five years later on Aug. 4.  Unfortunately, the second did not live up to its predecessor. 

In the Meg-2, the returning main character, Jonas Taylor (played by Jason Statham), a deep sea diver turned environmental activist, is leading a research team into the depths of the Mariana Trench. While exploring the bottom of the trench the team discovers a deep sea mining operation and shortly after find themselves in a life or death situation. 

The movie achieves a decent action packed story of vigilante environmental activists. But it is severely lacking in one area in particular… Sharks. The “Meg” in the movie’s title stands for Megladon which one would think would make a megalodon a pretty integral part of the story.  They would think wrong… while the movie did include some sharks they seemed to be added as an afterthought and really would not change the plot of the movie all that much if they were not included at all.  Even when the sharks do show the same anxiety most people would feel watching a run of the mill shark movie isn’t there because the people in the movie aren’t scared of them. Their lack of fear towards the sharks consequently ruins their relatability as characters making for an ironically surface level movie. 

Unfortunately, what the movie lacked in sharks it did not make up for in the plot. Overall the Meg-2 provides a pretty boring film with characters that are so poorly built up it’s hard to care about any of the situations they find themselves in and therefore hard to care about the movie. The storyline was painstakingly slow but somehow still managed to have too much going on. Resulting in a movie equal parts confusing and boring. 

The visuals and CGI of the movie were okay. When a movie takes place almost entirely in the ocean there is a pretty good opportunity for interesting cinematography. To put it bluntly the Meg-2’s visuals definitely aren’t blowing anyone out of the water. This is of course the case of most shark movies, however, most shark movies are not lacking sharks. In the almost two hour run time it’s difficult to find much of anything that the Meg-2 did exceptionally well. 

The Meg-2 lacked sharks, scares, and storyline. While it was a movie promising thrills and action, my only real fear was that it would never end and the most action packed event of the movie was me getting up to refill my drink. Overall a movie that clearly bit off much more than it could chew.