"The Meg" - Review

Ah the semi-ironic, over-the-top, b-movie creature feature! It was once a staple of late-nineties-and-early-two-thousands cinemaplexes. We’re talking films like Deep Blue Sea, Bats, Eight Legged Freaks, and Lake Placid — films that took inspiration from the creature features of the fifties and sixties, but gave them a humorous, ironic twist. (If you put enough drinks in me I’ll gladly go on a treatise that the sub-genre really started with Joe Dante’s Gremlins, but I’ll spare you that.) There have been attempts in the past decade to revive this genre with films like Snakes on a Plane and Piranha 3D. Lately, however, the genre has been dominated by low budget direct-to-dvd aquatic animal attack movies made by The Asylum (best known for the Sharknado series). The Meg hopes to proudly carry on the tradition of films like Deep Blue Sea; unfortunately, it’s never stupid enough nor as over-the-top as it needs to be. That being said, The Meg is not without its charms.
 
A billionaire tech genius (Rainn Wilson) is funding underwater research in the Mariana Trench. The team is led by Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao), his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing) and a group of shark bait crew members played by Ruby Rose, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy and Robert Taylor. The expedition is currently underway when an enormous mystery creature suddenly attacks their deep-sea sub. Enter rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) — he has worked with this team before, and in his previous rescue mission he claims he was attacked by such a monster as well. Everyone, of course, thought he was crazy, but now they are starting to believe his wild theories. So, Jonas is brought in to rescue the deep-sea sub and in the process of the rescue, he unleashes a megalodon, prehistoric shark previously thought to be extinct. Now it’s up to Jonas and his team to take down the shark before it ends up eating all the swimmers in neighboring Sanya Bay. Can Jonas and friends defeat the absurdly giant shark?!?!
 
The strangest thing about The Meg is just how earnest it is. The film treats a team of underwater researchers and one grumpy rescue diver banding together to kill a giant shark as if it were the most important spectacle since Star Wars. The problem is, however, is that the film isn’t billing itself as “action blockbuster;” it’s supposed to be “dumb but in on the joke” aquatic monster mayhem. The two approaches don't mesh together in an organic fashion, so you get tonal whiplash. Jon Turteltaub provides his usual professional workmanship to the proceedings. However, for this material to really work you need a director like Sam Raimi, someone who would be willing to go full over-the-top. That being said, there are a couple action scenes that are fun and give a certain amount of thrills, so maybe Turteltaub was hampered by the PG-13 rating. The script by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, based on a novel by Steve Alten, is your usual boilerplate animals on a rampage movie, with a fine helping of techno babble.
 
Statham is given his usual shtick of being a vaguely-annoyed-but-always-smirking action hero, and it works. He’s always been a fun screen presence, and he does his thing here. The rest of the cast, however, isn’t given much to do except spout exposition. Ruby Rose gets the worst of it, as all her character does is look at a computer and then spout technobabble that makes almost no sense.
 
The Meg isn’t a complete waste of time, but it needed to be dumber and more over-the-top to be a total success. As it stands, in the annals of modern day creature features it’s passable, but forgettable.
 
Two stars out of four.