Meg 2 The Trench review: Jason Statham leads a silly but enjoyable sequel

Jason Statham returns as Jonas Taylor, a cocky, all-action deep-sea rescuer, in Meg 2: The Trench. (Screen grab from trailer by Warner Bros and CMC Pictures)

Few things are as ludicrous as watching a man take on a yacht-sized shark. Fewer still are maybe as fun. The Meg returns with the second instalment of an unlikely franchise that came out of nowhere in 2018, and quite literally blasted money out of water. In the first, Jason Statham, played Jonas Taylor, a typically cocky, all-action deep-sea rescuer who neither understands nor considers this thing called fear. In Meg 2: The Trench, we return to the seabed from where creatures, previously assumed extinct, seem to arise. It’s a doomed mission obviously, but this time round, the climactic battle takes place on the surface. Before that, however, a rag-tag bunch of characters, vile mercenaries and a kid that everyone wants to save, chew the footage. The best part of this silly and sensational franchise, still, is the ‘Megaladon’ - a colossal, murderous animal that rips through entire groups of humans with aplomb.

Jonas Taylor and company are back in this second instalment as a group of scientists on an expedition to the deepest depths of the ocean. Unlike the first film, where the very existence of a Meg felt ingenious and alien, the knowledge here has been accommodated. This particular research team even has a pet Meg. One they are trying to train and control. “Megs and humans aren’t supposed to mix,” Taylor states matter-of-factly. A new mission, equipped with fancy new tech, and ‘evasive’ measures, doesn’t yield much in the way of discovery. Sabotaged by conniving miners who are out to extract precious rocks from the same trench, Taylor and company must survive an underwater walk, while also being subjected to face-eating fish with spears for teeth. Nothing in this version of the ocean feels relaxing, mind you. It might even make you delay that coastal trip you’ve been wanting to take. It’s silly but enthralling in a weird, what-else-could-they-think-of way.

While some team members survive, the mission accidentally blows open the layer that has thus far kept these creatures from swimming to the surface and laying waste to everyone’s beach vacation. Well past the midway point is when the fun begins in earnest. The megs, a whole bunch of them, head to ‘Fun Island’, where relaxed tourists and partying hippies become fodder for what is, un-ironically, the most enjoyable part of the film. There is probably an environmental message there somewhere, the idea that the ocean will find a way to recoup its due, but you can hardly care for that sort of subversion in a franchise that has accepted its preposterousness as part of the charm it seeks to wield.

That is, unless you have to absorb a lot of Jason Statham, posturing, wielding weapons and spider-kicking men into a meg’s open mouth (yes, that happens). You get that he is the star vehicle on show here, but he barely picks up a bruise while defeating giant murderous creatures, for the reputation he has built for over two decades. It’s all the more telling when everyone around him looks to be on a fast-food diet. The plot, the characters are thin, but so is the patience to tolerate humans in a narrative crying out for more of the giant man-eater, its typical indifference to manslaughter. For some reason, there is this preoccupation with Meiying, a young girl whose chemistry with not one, but several overbearing godfathers, becomes a bit tiring. You frankly couldn’t care less because you’re trying to figure out who’ll go next, and just how audacious and surreally satisfying the film can make it look. There is a strange cathartic quality to watching people being massacred at the hands of mute but murderous prehistoric animals. Jurassic Park, Godzilla have all offered it, but The Meg seems to have doubled down on it as a curative offering. Sadly, there just isn’t enough of it.

Creature features aren’t exactly a novel idea. Sharks have obviously been part of cinema folklore courtesy Steven Spielberg’s epoch-defining Jaws. But The Meg seems to have been cut from a different cloth entirely. This second instalment, directed by indie filmmaker Ben Wheatley, emphasizes on the visual of a murderous fish chomping down on unsuspecting people as a sort of guilty pleasure. In fact, it has found that bizarrely satisfying space where guilt isn’t even part of the tableau. Which makes it all the more puzzling that the film spends so much time with uninteresting people with pitiable death written all over their faces. All except Statham, who, though charismatic, maybe overdoes his saviour shtick. That said, the carnage, when it unspools on the screen is glorious, in a depraved but enjoyable sort of way. There is no sense of loss here, just the pleasure of watching petty humans become mincemeat for a hot minute. “Let’s move slowly, so we don’t look like food,” a character says at one point. It’s hilarious, dopey but also really fun to, pardon the pun, bite into.