The Meg 2: The Trench (2023) Dir: Ben Wheatley
- Ridley Coote
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
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When I watched this film's blockbuster predecessor, I had a lot more fun than I thought I would - it was very much a 'so bad it's good' kind of film. I was fully prepared for this Ben Wheatley directed sequel to be a truly terrible film as well, but I thought similarly that it'd be terrible in the highly amusing way that the first one was, or at least, that was the hope.
There was, as expected, a lot of bad to talk about with this film. It looked absolutely terrible, and was full of dodgy CGI, especially during the opening scene, which was so random. The sound mixing was also very substandard, and made it very jarring to go from overly loud action and music to very quiet dialogue in a matter of seconds. It makes the filmmaking look and feel awfully amateur.
The script was also abysmal. The story made zero sense, and was full of far too many boring and lifeless characters who contributed almost nothing. The film's plot was absurdly bad, and almost totally unrelated to the infamous extinct shark that it was supposed to feature so heavily and took its name from. With that said, the final thirty minutes, as badly written and acted as they were, were actually extremely entertaining.
Jason Statham reprised his starring role in this silly franchise, and continued to embrace the absurdity that is these shark films. He always looks like he's having a whale of a time, and I think him very clearly having fun is what helps the audience have fun with him. Honestly, if it was a different actor, or even if Statham took these films more seriously, they just wouldn't be remotely watchable.
In regards to the supporting cast, there was only really one actor who stood out for overly positive reasons, and that was Page Kennedy, who made me laugh on a number of occasions with his willingness to embrace the silliness of the film and his character. Other than that, nobody impressed at all, perhaps unsurprisingly, but I'd still like to mention the likes of Wu Jing, Shuya Sophia Cai, Sienna Guillory, and Sergio Paris-Mencheta.
Overall, by just about any technical metric, this is a horrendously bad film, but I can't pretend like I didn't have a really good time watching it. The film didn't even have much to do with megalodons, it was closer to a dinosaur film, but the stupidity it so confidently leaned into meant that, in all honesty, I didn't even care. These films know what they are, and they know their audience, and that's why people watch them. They embrace the stupidity and the goofiness, and it really works for them. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a third one at some point. "See you later, chum."
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