Jonah Naplan   August 4, 2023

There is a stapler sitting on my desk. It is manufactured by PaperPro and it is light blue. Apparently part of the company’s “One Finger” series, my stapler has 15 sheet power, and is not heavy to hold. I don’t use it all that often—maybe a couple of times a year—but I still feel that it is necessary to have featured amidst my other office supplies. My dad has a similar stapler in his office that is black and has an (impressive!) 25 sheet power. Sometimes I’ll use his to staple larger amounts of paper that my smaller, considerably more juvenile one, cannot handle. But here my stapler sits, watching life go by, time pass, and the minutiae of my everyday well-being. I’d rather write a review of my stapler than this movie.

Should “Meg 2: The Trench” even qualify as a film? That would depend on who you ask, but this critic’s answer is no. Not merely because I found it to be a wildly incompetent picture, but because even as a bad movie, it is as bare bones as bare bones films can possibly get. This nearly two-hour long … thing … is not a compatible film, experience, nor creature feature, refusing to let the audience have fun until the very, very end—an advent that comes far too late. There are sharks in this movie eventually, but it’s all bark and no bite.

“Meg 2: The Trench” does not contain much of a real plot, and the intent of this review is not to convince the reader otherwise, so simply think of the following as singular events that happen in this movie rather than an interlinked storyline. Jason Statham, looking a lot more uninterested in being in front of a camera than usual, returns to play Jonas Taylor, an intrepid deep-sea diver who, with connections to the Zhang Institute, discovered many surviving Megalodon species in the first “Meg” (which I will get to in a minute), and participated in a fight to protect Meiying (Sophia Cai), the young daughter of a colleague (played by Li Bingbing in the predecessor, and who also declined an offer to be in this sequel—therefore the logic is that her character is now dead).

One of the sacred Megs is in captivity by the means to continue study, but once that big shark escapes, the movie … well … goes elsewhere. Jonas and his crew—most notably Meiying’s uncle Jiuming (Wu Jing), and all of the movie’s other disposable, shark-munchable cogs—journey down to the ocean trenches, or the Megalodon homeland, if you will, discovering not only more big fish, but a slew of evil tyrants drilling for resources. The head honcho of this operation, played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta, is so insignificant that his villainous character is not even privileged with a name on Google. He is without a doubt one of the most forgettable and miniscule antagonists of the whole year.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it could be calculated that about 75-80% of “Meg 2: The Trench” focuses on these two groups butting heads, instead of the shark carnage that we all came to see. Take it from a fan of the first “Meg,” myself. While it is certainly no “Jaws,” by any means, “The Meg” is a wildly fun and surprisingly suspenseful shark flick that first prioritizes what it’s meant to do, and then explores the cinematic waters beyond.

But this bizarre sequel, directed by dark humorist Ben Wheatley, from a script by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, and Dean Georgaris only reaches for the highest fruit in the last 20-25 minutes, finally giving us the creature carnage we paid for and deserve. While this segment provides the occasional amusing moment, line of dialogue, or sight gag, even then the movie is never exactly delivering on the real gore and brutality that makes an audience whoop and holler. It doesn’t help that Wheatley was limited to a PG-13 rating, and it often feels as though he is whimpering in the corner, discouraged from putting in any real effort.

With this horrible script, with some of the worst dialogue you’ll hear all year, I can’t necessarily blame him. Not only is “The Trench” hilariously unfunny—we find ourselves laughing at the movie, not with it—but we are drowning in its attempts to be exuberant and capture the persona of what I kept envisioning as “Fast & Furious with Sharks.” None of the actors here are giving it their A-game either. A side buddy story about Cliff Curtis and Page Kennedy just doesn’t work, and no one can convince me that it does; Statham—appearing as though he’s aiming for the same self-serious smarm but not actually getting there—feels dully tame this time around; and smaller performances could have the potential to stand out, but are completely disregarded when they’re merely killed off without another mention.

The final scene, taking place at a conveniently named “Fun Island,” and involving not only a trifecta of Megalodons but also a giant squid, will hit it big for many audiences, but none of the laughter, shouts, or cheers will be earned—more so a way to break the awkward silence that surrounded the borefest that is the receding 90 minutes.

“Meg 2: The Trench” is a series of poorly executed ideas with little to no correlation to one another, coinciding into a big extravaganza that we all came to see and enjoy, but never quite receive in full form. Plot point to plot point, set piece to set piece, character to character, all loosely stapled together, but who really cares? My mighty stapler may only be able to bind 15 pieces of paper, but I have no doubt it could think up a more competent narrative than these filmmakers.

Now playing in theaters.