August has become the dumping ground for below-average blockbusters looking to snatch the last few pounds and dollars from audiences before life returns to normal, the sun goes into hiding and award season begins to rear its head. Not known for being a hub of quality filmmaking, the likes of Suicide Squad, The Hitman's Bodyguard and Mechanic: Ressurection have found home at the end of summer cinema and while they have hardly inspired critics over the past couple of years, they have performed effectively enough in closing out the blockbuster window to varying degrees of success. The Meg more than fits the mould: a trashy, poorly-made slice of entertainment that lands on our shores with the intention of so overwhelming in its scale that its quality is of little importance.
A crew researching at an underwater facility inadvertently release a prehistoric shark, known to be a Megalodon, from the deepest depths of the ocean. Jonas Taylor, a rescue diver haunted by life-or-death decisions, is called to help save the stranded crew and prevent the shark from causing too much destruction. Sold on Jason Statham's star-power but also featuring Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao and Cliff Curtis amongst others, the Jon Turteltaub-directed science-fiction horror thriller is adapted from Steven Alten's 'Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror'. Like the shark of its title, The Meg hopes to make a killing.
Based on the film's posters and marketing, you will already have a solid indication as to whether The Meg is the type of film that will enjoy. Quite willingly, it has sold itself as a big ol' dumb blockbuster that requires your brain to be surrendered at the screening's door and your critical sensibilities to take a backseat for a relentless, two-hour tsunami of cheesy dialogue, predictable plot turns and an overindulgence of shark killings. I wasn't too enthusiastic (particularly given how the likes of similarly-targeted action pieces Skyscraper and Rampage had frustrated me recently) but my expectations had been firmly lowered and I was willing the wave to sweep me up; what I didn't expect, however, is just how dull The Meg was going to be.
With ingenuity completely absent from the screenplay cooked up by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, The Meg is a wholly predictable, formulaic and generic venture lacking in surprise or creativity. As such, every plot turn and development is horribly foreseeable, with little in the way of originality or innovation. Deep down, you may have been hoping for a sense of subversion, a slight tinkering to conventions and tropes that would inject this shark tale with a few hearty shockers to ensure the energy levels remain palpable and high. Unfortunately, no such thing exists in this film. While I can't exactly fault the 113-minute runtime - it flows surprisingly efficiently, with big set pieces floating throughout - the lack of creativity in any of the sequences make it an utter slog to endure at times. For a film sold as Statham vs. Shark, that should not be the case. But alas.
With a rumoured $175 million production budget, you can understand why The Meg targets the mainstream. It needs to play as wide as possible to make it a worthwhile adventure for the studios and production companies attached to the project - but that really does limit the film artistically and viscerally. It's itching to indulge in the blood and the gore that a 15/R rating would allow but in skirting graphicness and framing the violence in a more digestible manner for the mainstream, the intensity and suspense are diluted and the balls-to-the-wall madness is never truly harnessed or felt.
Statham and Bingbing throw themselves in to the deeper end, committing to their roles and leading from the front solidly, dialling an effective balance - but the rest of the cast are less successful. Some overplay it (Page Kennedy and Rainn Wilson ham it up to almost insufferable heights) while a couple of others struggles to develop the humour needed for a film like this to work (I'm looking at you Winston Chao and the ever-flat Ruby Rose). Performance-wise, it's a decidedly mixed bag and almost everyone has trouble selling the forced, clumsy emotion that weighs it down. Even the dynamic between the team is half-baked at best, unconvincing at worst.
Despite trudging through a disappointingly dull hour-and-a-half, Turteltaub does deliver an entertaining-enough grande finale that he should be commended for. You don't quite muster any empathy for the surviving characters but the sense of jeopardy is sustained long enough for the final stretch to work and, at the most disposable, barely passable level, entertain. Even in saving the best until last though, it's all a bit of a wash-out, cramming what audiences came for into the final, bombastic twenty minutes. Props to Harry Gregson-Williams' score for keeping the energy up when everything else became sluggish though; his work is quite admirable.
The Meg is dumb and (more unforgivably) dull, a film without the resources or scope to indulge in the genre thrills it so desperately seeks. It plays it wide and so plays it neutered, absent the element of surprise or sense of novelty that would have ensured it became the slice of trashy, throwaway fun it should have been. The poorly-matched performances from the cast fail to give the film much in the way of tonal security or balance and the disappointingly limp screenplay never capitalises on its absurdity; it was given a free pass to go big but I just wanted to go home. A soggy experience not worth the trip.
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
(4/10)
Summary: The Meg lacks the bite to excite, restricted by the need to play it mainstream alongside a limp screenplay devoid of the element of surprise that prevents it from capitalising on the absurdity of its premise. It was set up as Jason Statham vs. Shark -- who knew something like that could be so dull?