THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
The Meg was an ideal guilty pleasure because it was an entertaining monster flick that knew what it was. I’m a sucker for that specific kind, but I became too much of a sucker to make time for a sequel that was far from entertaining.
PLOT
The sequel dubbed The Trench takes place 10 years after the Mariana Trench unleashed the prehistoric Megalodon thought to have been extinct. Instead of abandoning it, Mana One would continue exploring it for research purposes and Jonas Taylor has been taking part of fighting environmental crimes. After the unexplained death of Suyin Zhang, he and her brother Jiuming Zhang have adopted her daughter Meiying. Recently, Mana One has been studying another Meg they name Haiqi who’s being trained by Jiuming in a Hainan reserve. Despite the giant shark acting erratic during training, Zhang is more enthusiastic instead of concerned like Jonas. Following a charity event, the two would lead a routine submersible exploration to the trench, with Meiying stowing away, and Mac & DJ observing from the Mana One. As they head down, Haiqi who had escaped the reserve, attacks their subs. This leads to them diving through the thermocline to avoid being eaten until being surrounded by two more male Megs that are bigger than Haiqi, a beta and an alpha. They avoid being devoured due to the giant sharks mating, but they end up finding an illegal mining operation nearby. It’s station is operated by Montes who has a vendetta against imprisonment for putting him in prison a long time ago. When he sees Jonas’ team near the station, he causes a landslide to get them killed. In the process, he kills members of his team and causes a rupture in the trench. With the rescue pod sabotaged, Jonas’ team must reach the station with exosuits. The trip wouldn’t be unscathed when members of he diving team get killed: Lance (Felix Mayr) would be killed by a giant octopus, Sal (Kiran Sonia Sawar) would be eaten by a Meg and Curtis (Whoopie Van Ream) would have her helmet implode from the underwater pressure. Besides Jonas, the remaining survivors would include Jiuming, Meiying and security officer Rigas. It is upon reaching the station where they discover a member of Mana One named Jess, has betrayed them alongside Oceanic Institute’s boss Hillary Driscoll for financial gain. She tries to order Rigas to kill Jonas on behalf of Montes. When she refuses, she tries to kill them remotely until the group finds another spare submersible to escape. They assure escaping when Jonas overcomes a fight with Montes. The mercenary is able to escape as well through a buoy. When Jonas’ crew makes it to the top, they realized the rupture didn’t just free the Megs but also the octopus and a swarm of lizards dubbed Snappers. Mac & DJ would escape Mana One when Driscoll sends more mercenaries to take over the facility. Despite reaching the surface like Jonas, Jess’ decision to wait for him would backfire when one of the Megs crash through the station and eats her. Jonas’ crew are able to avoid the Megs again when they focus on the mercenaries. They head to the Fun Island Resort to warn the public danger is coming, but it wouldn’t be enough as the sharks and the other creatures feast in an instant, killing many innocent bystanders apart from Montes’ mercenary tourists. Snappers would eat Driscoll who went to the island to ensure Montes deals with Jonas for good. As the group of protagonists evacuate the island and kill as much creatures as they can, Jonas would kill the beta Meg and lure Montes to be eaten by the alpha. Jiuming and Mac would make a bomb out of fertilizer and use it on the giant octopus, which would get the attention of Haiqi to kill it. Jonas is able to kill the alpha by impaling it with a helicopter rotor, whereas Jiuming ends the conflict by saving everyone else from Haiqi, using his training signals to divert her attention. As the protagonists recover from the incident, Rigas does consider the possibility of the female Meg to be pregnant, but the others choose to not think about it and are relieved they survived. The film would end with them celebrating their victory.
THOUGHTS
I’m not kidding when I said a soft spot for what we got the first time around, so I didn’t want to overthink how bad this was gonna he. I trusted Director Ben Wheatley to make a hella good time due to enjoying his previous film, Free Fire, but of course success doesn’t repeat itself. Now I can give due credit when saying all the creatures looked realistic with their visual effects, making solid action sequences, but it ain't enough like before. Since the predecessor had its inspiration of Jurassic Park, we get a 180 of it being inspired by the re-quel Jurassic World and that is where it goes downhill. I mean who the hell thinks it's a good ideas to have a megalodon around in a reserve, without thinking about money? It's clear the Jurassic films don't exist in this film's universe, which excuses why they would go along with this excuse. The overall story doesn't work because I don't connect with the cast/characters like before. Jason Statham does his best to chew up enough scenery to make Jonas a cool protagonist, but he got inconsistent in the finale. I did scratch my head wondering if one can be really strong enough to wield a helicopter rotor the way he did, but I'm pulled when he chose to not overthink the possibility of Haiqi being pregnant. For a guy that killed two megs before this film, he knows damn well it's a bad idea for these creatures to breed. What was more confusing than the decision to kill off Suyin and have her be replaced by her brother Jiuming. I didn't mind Jing Wu making him optimistic the whole time, but he was playing with fire and had too much luck at his side. Training a giant shark is a whole other ballgame than training velociraptors like Jurassic World because the ocean is more vulnerable of a location than the surface. I was so with Jonah when saying Haiqi was distracted by the nearby dolphins than the tracking signal because it was too close of a call at that point. Cliff Curtis & Page Kennedy play off each other very well as returning characters Mac and DJ, but not every scene of their banter lands for me. DJ really thought ahead of the game when getting poison tipped bullets like in Jaws 2 because I would've done the same. I'm confused on the presence of seeing Meiying return apart from nostalgia's sake. I got nothing against Sophia Cai but after she lost her mother, it would be more logical of her to avoid the danger like Suyin would've wanted. My point is proven whenever she walked into it to save others, proving herself to be selflessly helpful like her late parent. I couldn't connect with Rigas at all because it felt like Melissanthi Mahut was filling in the shoes of Jax, expressing the loyalty similar to Mac & DJ. And like past monster flicks, the villains fall flat for me. Sergio Peris-Mancheta does try to get me hooked with Montes being a vengeful figure who's determined to get even, but it doesn't go any further. They could've made him interesting by saying he was falsely accused instead of being shameless of his past and willing to sacrifice others for gain. It was way too straightforward of a call for me. Then I just got completely bored over Skyler Samuels' Jess and Sienna Guillroy's Driscoll because even they are carbon copies of Jurassic World villains whose actions are all for the money, plain & simple. I'm so careless of their presence I don't even react when they go out because it's too predictable to see coming no matter how cool it may have looked. That statement is high when I think of Jess because her death was way too similar of Deep Blue Sea. With the characters not being well written, there's a whole other load of problems that hold it back from being enjoyable. If you got your own soft spot for the predecessor, I wish you good luck with this. I can admit it was cool to see a meg devour a dinosaur on the beach, but I also have to be the historian here when I say the shark existed in the same period as ones like a T Rex. And was it a good idea for Jonas to hide in a container at the edge of the boat? For a guy whose survived two megs at this point, that's playing with your own life right there. With it also being on top of four other containers, he could've fell over. I don't even believe Jiuming made it to the room so fast after just being pulled out of the water. I don't care how close the room was, it doesn't add up. When I said Jiuming had too much luck at his side, another example goes to how the three megs do not eat him and his group at all after eating the mercenaries' boat? There shouldn't be a reason for the the predators to skip out another meal when it doesn't look like they share. And how the fuck does he not know the events of the first film? He has to know that's when his dad died. If he doesn't know megs were responsible, that's ironically stupid as fuck. If we gotta keep acknowledging stupid ass bullshit, I would point out Jiuming poking DJ just to open the door behind the mercenaries that would lead to them getting eaten by the Snappers. It would've been more realistic for him to get grazed while pushing the button himself. Nor do I believe he dodged that flare gun in time. Also after 25 dives beforehand, how did no one notice Montes' station before? If they've been that deep into the trench, this shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone. And off of seeing the station, Jonas should've went back up like he said he would off of suspicion. I even thought it was cool for Jonas to have exploding harpoons to kill the beta male meg, but why isn't it used in the actual trench to kill the octopus and the alpha meg? They would've saved themselves right then and there from guaranteed danger. I want to say the exo-suits are cool, but then I changed on seeing how Jonas' group barely handled the snappers when they attacked them in the suits compared to them punching 200lb weights. What gets more confusing on Driscoll's plan to mine the ocean for minerals without blowing up the trench, what is the real issue? It's not overfishing and it looked like they didn't look like they were bothering the megs so killing Jonas and company is pointless. And should I really care Jess and Montes were dating, because I don't. I should be intimidated when the giant octopus snatches a woman on a boat, but I get pulled away yet again when no one else saw or heard it until it goes everyone all at once. There's no reason for a creature like an octopus to act with stealth when killing due to its size. Speaking of which, how come the megs never attacked the octopus at the trench yet does so near the beach. I'm all in for a monster mash, but that's a massive continuity error because looking back at the first film, the first meg we saw didn't hesitate eating the giant squid. I don't know how anyone put these issues to enjoy it for what it is because it's way too bad to do so. To get this over with, Meg 2: The Trench is one of the worst monster/shark flicks around for lacking all the potential to be average guilty pleasure. If you got your own soft spot for the predecessor, I wish you good luck with this.
Comentarios