‘The Meg 2: The Trench’ review: indie hero Ben Wheatley goes to the shark side

Traditionally, the monster movie sequel goes one of two ways: bigger or more numerous. Sometimes three, when an even nastier monster shows up and the original monster – just misunderstood all along – becomes a good guy, possibly even with a monster girlfriend. By handing the Meg franchise (elevator pitch: Jurassic Jaws) to cult director Ben Wheatley, however, Warner Bros. opened up all manner of previously unthinkable possibilities. Pagan cult subplots? Surreal hallucinogenic sequences? Dozens of explainer articles headlined ‘What Actually Happened At The End Of Meg 2’?

In the event, Wheatley is no match for the expectations of a half-billion-dollar franchise, and ends up just going bigger, more numerous and further overboard. Jason Statham returns as deep-sea rescue expert Jonas Taylor, a character with barely one dimension and an interior monologue that appears to consist solely of ‘in this situation, what would Jason Statham do?’. Having defeated two Megs – or megalodons, a species of huge prehistoric sharks – in the first film, he now takes regular dives down into the trench where the beasts roam, while business magnate and Meg freak Jiuming (martial arts actor Wu Jing) sets about bonding with a Meg he has in captivity.

This Meg’s inevitable escape, though, is fast-forgotten background to the film’s first unnecessary hour, wherein Statham and his crew of chomp-fodder dive 25,000 feet into the titular trench only to find a far more human threat at play. For too long, the Megs looming occasionally out of the watery depths act much the same as Dune’s sandworms: an indistinct threat backdropping a fairly bog-standard sci-fi action story of greed, back-stabbing and shonky escape submarines. Forget anything you thought you learned from the Titanic sub disaster about water pressure, visibility and sea-life at the ocean’s floor, mind. In Wheatley’s underwater world – suck it, science! – you can see miles by a couple of shoulder lights and swim about quite happily with the correct (I kid you not) sinus control.

This whole plot segment, and the vaguely empathetic aside of having teenage wannabe scientist Meiying Zhang (Sophia Cai) smuggling herself into all of this deep-sea danger, is swiftly and rightfully jettisoned when the Megs begin to surface and Wheatley finally unleashes subaqueous hell on resorts and pleasure boats aplenty in the movie’s final reel. Engaging in equal measure of thrills and silliness (one memorable shot gives viewers a Meg’s tonsil perspective on the chomp-‘em-up action) it’s a thoroughly enjoyable creature feature rampage peppered with some fine gags and a veritable Sharknado of fang-defying heroism.

Wheatley proves himself an instant master of CGI monster movie mayhem here, but by piling it on so relentlessly thick he all but admits defeat in his initial attempts to give the franchise any believable depths. Maybe next time, when Lars von Trier presents Meg 3: Chaos Reigns.