The Meg (2018)

Directed by:John Turteltaub

Viewed in Theatre

 

Summary: When a team of divers are trapped on the ocean floor, an aquatic research center recruits Jonas Taylor, the world’s beefcakiest alcoholic, to save them and fight the monster that they have all unknowingly unleashed.

 

There is something I have to admit upfront, and that is that I love Jason Statham. There’s just something strange about the way he delivers lines, the way he tries to emote where it seems like he’s acting like an action star in a blockbuster, rather than being an action star in a blockbuster. It is genuinely silly and charming and it’s part of the reason why I am not even sure if I should be reviewing this movie. I think it is supposed to be some kind of horror combo film, like action-horror or action-comedy-horror or some other bizarre genre blend that’s a terrible idea. But I have seen some places list one if its possible genres as horror, so let’s put this giant shark thriller in an observation tank and see what we can see.

The plot of The Meg is that a team of marine researches launch a submersible to penetrate a previously unknown gap in the ocean floor in an effort to locate a point deeper than the Mariana Trench. The submersible makes it down to the deeper ocean floor, only to discover that there are some things there that were never meant to be found. While down there, the submersible is damaged by an unseen force, and they need the best of the best to get their people back to safety. Cue the team locating Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), a submarine search and rescue specialist who swore off submarine search and rescue missions after a mission 5 years prior to these events ended in disaster after an unseen creature destroyed a submarine. Jonas initially wants nothing to do with the group, but agrees to go with them after learning one of the people stranded is his ex-wife.

 

That plot summary seems like it could be a very interesting horror movie. You could have these really well-established submersible crews who get stuck on the ocean floor and then just see what happens to them as the pressure takes a toll on them and the reality of the situation sinks in and messes with their brains. That could have been a good movie. Unfortunately that isn’t the movie we have. The movie we have is a giant shark movie, and that kind of cerebral understated horror premise will not work with making an August blockbuster. So naturally, after the wrecked submersible plot is resolved the second plot emerges, a shark of mythic proportions swimming around and eating everything in sight.

 

Aside from the fact that this seems like two different movies stitched together from those two tonally different plots, the main problem with the story is that this movie has no idea what kind of movie it actually wants to be. There is a large cast of characters: the comically gruff semi-retired diver played by Statham, the evil(?) corporate executive played by Rainn Wilson, the head of the research station played by Winston Chao, among many others. The issue with these characters is the same issue that a lot of blockbusters have, which is that the events of the plot take precedence over the establishment of character. There are almost a dozen characters in the main cast and although there are movies that are quite good at managing and developing large casts, this movie is not one of them. Large swathes of the film proceed with zero real character development only for the movie to suddenly stop and decide that character moments need to happen, even though they have not been properly established. For example, the head researcher is having an emotional discussion with his adult daughter about how he is sorry he was so hard on her and that he just wanted her to be the best there is at what she could do. It is an okay scene out of context, but in context we have NEVER seen him be hard on her! We have seen nothing of this relationship, but it seemed like a moment that should happen in a movie like this, so it did.

 

That may have also had something to do with the movie being based on a book. Now I haven’t read this book, but there are certain assumptions I am comfortable making based on the fact that this was an adaptation. I can assume that most of the plot points we see in the movie are taken from the book and that would include the ones that don’t really add anything to the story. To illustrate, and here is a minor SPOILER, about midway through the film the team tries to kill the giant shark. This leads to a plan where someone is placed in an indestructible shark cage armed with a poisoned harpoon. with the goal being to lure the shark in and kill it. The plan works and the shark is killed, but while they are celebrating a BIGGER shark emerges and attacks the boat and everyone is thrown into the water. Why did this have to happen? This movie is almost 2 hours long and it probably would have really helped the pacing if parts like this could have been trimmed or even removed to just focus on the real danger of the bigger shark. This part really didn’t add anything to the intensity or horror of the even bigger shark and it felt more like a bizarre, pointless twist than an actual plot point. I understand that they may not have realized there were pacing issues until after filming the sequences with the smaller shark, and it would be difficult to edit around that, but maybe they should have figured that out during the writing process? END SPOILER. Still that isn’t even the biggest problem.

 

The main problems are just that The Meg can’t decide what it wants to be. It isn’t scary enough to be a good horror movie, but at the same time it isn’t hokey or goofy enough to be enjoyable in a fun B-movie kind of way. The characters are shallow and cookie cutter, only having any kind of complexity when the movie remembers that there is supposed to be an emotional scene where they can just try to shoehorn character development into these cardboard cutouts who get picked up and moved to different sets. That dozen-strong cast I mentioned earlier? Less than half of them get any kind of serious characterization and the few people who have established character traits only get them so that plot points further down the road can be explained. For example, one of the submersible pilots worked with an anti-whaling organization and as a result she announces to the audience that she knows how to construct and operate makeshift torpedoes. This character proceeds to do nothing for the rest of the movie, except when this very specific knowledge comes in handy! Also she is Jonas’ ex-wife but that also never really comes up because they only interact once after the two eventually meet up. This kind of lazy characterization just kills movies like this because you don’t develop any sort of bond with any of the characters and you don’t care when they’re in danger or even really want them to succeed beyond the most basic reasoning of, ‘yeah I guess I’d like these guys to stop that giant shark.’

There were a lot of things that frustrated me about the movie but it never really got to the level of me being actually upset about what I was seeing. Part of that is probably that Jason Statham is such an odd action star and he is kind of charismatic enough to carry this movie, even when what is happening shouldn’t really work. The Meg is never really scary nor is there any good gore, or ANY gore for that matter, so I can’t really recommend it as a scary shark movie, but if you really really like Jason Statham this is your latest opportunity to see him star in a movie. To everyone else though, give this a pass.