MEG 2: THE TRENCH: A MOVIE THAT TRIES TOO HARD TO ONE UP ITS PREDASESSOR

Meg 2: The Trench is a 2023 Science Fiction Action Film directed by Ben Wheatley from a screenplay written by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, and Dean Georgaris. It is based on the 1999 novel, “The Trench” by Steve Alten, and serves as the sequel to The Meg (2018). The film follows a group of scientists who must outrun and outswim a hostile group of Megalodons when a malevolent mining operation threatens their scientific mission and forces them into a high-stakes battle for survival. It stars Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Skyler Samuels and Cliff Curtis.

Meg 2: The Trench had its world premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival on June 9, 2023, and was released in the United States on August 4, 2023, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with criticism for its plot, but was a box office success, grossing $394 Million worldwide off of a $140 Million budget.

The film currently has an abysmal 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based off of 172 Critic Reviews), with a much higher Audience Score of 73% (based on over 1,000 Verified Ratings). It also has a Metascore of 40 (based on only 38 critic reviews) on Metacritic, with a User Score of 5.0 (based on 120 User Ratings) and a 5.1/10 on IMDB (based on almost 49,000 reviews).

So, I knew this movie was going to be a doozey when the opening image was a dragonfly eating another bug 65 Million years in the past. A series of prehistoric animals are eaten by larger prehistoric animals, and by the time the sequence is done, you realize that the film is attempting to go full Jurassic Park, which almost made me stop the movie right then and there.

But I pressed on to find out soon after, that Bingbing Li, who plays Suyin, Meiying’s Mother, and the love interest of Jason Statham’s character, Jonas, in the first film, is surprisingly missing from the cast. There are several reports that she was indeed slated to reprise her role in this film, but that she left the cast for undisclosed reasons, and this development changes the entire game. Enter Jing Wu, who plays Jiuming, the brother none of us knew that Suyin had, to attempt to fill the void.

The story was ridiculous, but the story always is with films like this, and as long as the movie doesn’t appear to take itself too seriously, I think you can forgive such a thing. The writing is exactly what you would expect here as well, the starring actors carrying most of the narrative weight of the dialogue while the secondary characters just blurt out one-liners, with the action driving the story at break neck speed, towards the finish line.

But there is one glaring problem with this particular film…there are just too many threats here to make you care who lives or dies outside of Jason Statham’s character Jonas, and Meiying, played by an older Sophia Cai. In fact, there are a lot of characters you can tell were added just so we could watch them die while our heroes attempt the ultimate multi-task, taking a break from tracking down and killing giant sharks they’ve now let loose for a second time, if you can believe it, in order to undermine an evil underwater drilling operation.

But the screenwriter slight of hand doesn’t do the trick here, as the budding romance between Suyin and Jonas gave the first film some much needed heart. And the addition of two more megalodons swimming around in the ocean to contend with, along with a pack of rabid dino-komodo dragons terrorizing our scientists by land, just becomes a bit too much. It’s clear that the writers tried everything they could think of to one up the first movie, but sometimes less is more. Jaws managed to be one of the most decorated movies of all time, and all it needed to accomplish that feat was a single great white shark.

The movie is currently available on cable on MAX, HULU and Amazon Prime with Premium Subscription. It’s also available on Redbox, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu and Apple TV ($19.99).