By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
A sequel to a bad film is never a good idea, but it still doesn’t prepare viewers for the visual atrocity they’re about to experience. “Meg 2: The Trench” is a combination of lazy directing, cringe-worthy acting, and some of the worst dialogue writing to grace the silver screen. The only audience this film is fit for is an audience of catatonic patients, as it may successfully revive their mobility enough to turn off the disgraceful movie.
Set four years after the events of the first film, rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) returns to assist in the exploration of a trench off the coast of China. Inexplicably, there’s an illegal mining facility at the bottom of this 25,000-foot trench with several massive megalodons patrolling the area. When the criminals learn of the researcher’s presence, they immediately seek to kill them to hide their dastardly enterprise, despite drawing the attention of the massive apex predators.
After massive explosions rip a hole in some thermal layer in the ocean, the prehistoric beasts are able to escape the confines of the trench and head to the surface and wreak havoc on vacationing beachgoers nearby. There happens to be another megalodon in captivity who easily escapes to link up with its rampaging friends. Jonas once again finds himself in a battle against these monsters, while also dealing with criminal miners and some extra dinosaur era beasts randomly thrown in for good measure.
English veteran director Ben Wheatley takes home the victory for creating the worst film of the year thus far. “Meg 2: The Trench” is the definition of a shameless money grab with no intention of fashioning a coherent plot to make it even somewhat entertaining. The movie is all over the place with the criminal mining storyline distracting the audience from what they came to see, monstrous sharks eating everything in their path. There’s even a point towards the end of the film where characters are running in every direction like the Keystone Kops in a poor attempt at humor. The only thing missing was silly cartoonish sound effects to emphasize the ridiculousness of the scenes.
Unlike the “Jurassic Park” movies, Wheatley makes zero effort at creating any kind of plausibility. There’s a scene in which Jason Statham is literally fending off a megalodon with his foot. Or another scene in which Statham swims at a depth of 25,000 feet without any protective gear, which is physically impossible. The absurdity and carelessness of the filmmaking extends to the editing room, where they fail to catch numerous and obvious goofs like when Statham starts a scene with a total of three spears, using two of them, yet still showing two strapped to his back in follow-up shots.
The acting throughout this film is horrendous without a single redeemable performance amongst the entire cast. Some of it can be blamed on the atrocious screenwriting, which featured some of the most poorly written lines in a feature film with over a $100 million budget. Jason Statham seems to be going for a record, having now starred in three bad movies already this calendar year, with “Fast X” and “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” being the previous two. Once again, he employs his standard callous tough guy character into this role, showing his lack of acting range or ability to give any depth or meaning to his character. He has one more movie slated for release this year, “Expend4bles,” which is set to come out next month, wonder what kind of creativity he’ll bring to that performance.
“Meg 2: The Trench” is not only an insult to filmmaking, but also an insult to viewers’ intelligence. And don’t falsely assume it’s one of those action films that is so stupid, it’s funny and entertaining, it’s just plain stupid.
This movie earns:
