Meg 2: The Trench movie review (2023) – Roger Ebert

Anybody hoping that Ben Wheatley may convey a number of the exuberant persona and boundary-pushing creativity on show in movies like “Kill Listing” and “Within the Earth” to his for-hire gig directing the dismally boring “Meg 2: The Trench” ought to discover totally different cinematic waters to swim in. A lot as in his atrocious remake of “Rebecca” in 2020, Wheatley largely telephones it in right here, and he does so with a rotary landline. No less than till the ultimate half-hour, when he’s lastly free to unleash some monstrous chaos, this is likely one of the dullest movies of the yr, a plodding, poorly made large shark film that inexplicably lets the large shark take a backseat to an evil underwater drilling operation. This factor simply has no enamel.

By no means actually allowed to have the winking enjoyable he will get from his finest motion components, Jason Statham appears visibly bored this time as Jonas, the deep-sea diver worker of the Zhang Institute, the ability that found the continued existence of a prehistoric predator often called the Megalodon within the first movie. The sequel reveals that the analysis facility has even stored one in captivity to proceed to review it. Jiuming (an inconsistent Wu Jing), the top of the institute, is even satisfied that he can practice the megalodon, however every little thing goes unsuitable when it escapes, and … no, this isn’t only a shark-escape-attack film, though you’ll want it was so simple as that.

As a substitute of specializing in the fugitive meg—who escapes hysterically simply whereas the crew is concentrated on one thing else—the script by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, and Dean Georgaris sends Jonas and his crew deep into the ocean to the ditch that the megalodons have known as house for hundreds of years. On their means into the murky, poorly shot ocean—significantly, Wheatley’s reply to recreating underwater pictures is simply to show the lighting down—they uncover different megalodons, however that’s nothing in comparison with the evil people who additionally occur to be within the trench, mining it for sources. Sure, Jonas and his group come across an unlawful operation in the course of the ocean, which ends up in their vessels being destroyed. A sequence by which they’re pressured to stroll the ocean ground to a facility is likely one of the most poorly executed in years. It nearly felt real-time.

A number of personality-less characters get chomped or blown up, however many of the fake rigidity is saved for Meiying (Sophia Cai), who survived the primary movie and turns into the principle creature Jonas tries to maintain alive. It’s barely a spoiler to say that Jonas, Jiuming, Meiying, and some others ultimately make it again above the floor, fleeing the ability now overrun with troopers for causes I couldn’t presumably care sufficient to clarify. They head to a resort known as Enjoyable Island, and nearly 90 minutes into this mess, “The Trench” lastly will get a bit of enjoyable. You see, the underwater explosions destroyed the temperature defend that had stored issues like an enormous octopus away from vacationers. Lastly, Wheatley and his group get to have a bit of enjoyable, nevertheless it’s far too little and much too late.