Film Review: The Meg (2018)

The science is sound

The Meg (12A)

Starring: Jason Statham, Li BingBing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose

Director: Jon Turteltaub

The Plot: It's "The Stath" vs a giant shark . . . all right. When a research station successfully sends divers to previously-unreached depths of the Mariana Trench, they're attacked by a Megalodon - a gigantic, 75 foot long shark thought to be extinct. Their only option is to call on the services of deep-sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham), who previously encountered a "Meg" five years earlier and hasn't been back in the water since. While Jonas is able to overcome his fears and rescue the divers, their efforts unintentionally free the Meg from the trench and it begins heading towards China, attacking anything in its path. It's up to Jonas and the rest of the station's crew to stop it . . .

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: B-movie horrors featuring gigantic animals or unusual versions of them are really popular, and not because they're good films. People enjoy them because of how bad they are: how silly the story is, how dreadful the visual effects are, how cheesy the acting is etc. In recent years the Sharknado series has proved a real winner for the SyFy channel for all of those reasons, and amongst all the different animals that feature in these kinds of film the shark is king. Take a quick look through IMDb and you'll find all sorts like Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, Sharktopus, 5 Headed Shark Attack, Ghost Shark, and my personal favourite Sharktopus vs Whalewolf. Every now and then Hollywood attempts a take on these kinds of film and the results are generally the same, just with a bigger budget. The latest addition to this is The Meg.

Now, this isn't going to be a very long review because really, this isn't a film that warrants one or tries to take itself seriously. It's exactly what you'd expect it to be - it's a big, silly monster movie with the star attraction of The Stath. The acting is bad across the board, the story is full of plot holes and gives science the back seat, there's a far too obvious romance subplot and, at close to two hours, the run time is much too long. It also relies too much on stereotypical "shark movie" tropes - jump scares from sudden appearances of the shark, people being eaten when you think it's safe, people not being eaten when it seems they're about to, etc, and the film's 12A rating means there's very little gore. It is funny (both intentionally and unintentionally) though, and to its credit the visual effects at least are very good, which you'd expect given the film had a reported budget of $130-170 million. Sadly though, if - like me - you were hoping to see The Stath roundhouse kick the shark in mid-air, Transporter style, you'll be disappointed. He does get a decent victory line of "Chew on this, you ugly bastard", but it's no "Smile you son of a bitch!"

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

An acceptable addition to Hollywood's collection of giant monster films. As long as you're in the target audience then you'll get enjoyment out of this, as it has some of the things you love from a b-movie horror - the bad acting, the silly story - combined with some genuine laughs and fairly impressive visual effects. On the flip side though, if you're not a fan of these kinds of film, this won't be the film to convert you.