The Meg movie review

Here's what you need to know; it's been five years since a mission went horribly wrong for deep sea rescuer Jonas Taylor and his friends, and Jonas is convinced that the rescue was compromised not by his own actions, but by a sea monster. Now, when a scientific outpost off the coast of China makes the find of the century, Jonas' past demons come back to bite him, quite literally, as they unwittingly release an ancient alpha predator back into the world, one that they must now deal with before it has the chance to make humanity scared of going back in the water forever.
I watched The Meg, I surprised myself by dragging myself, and my dad, out to the cinema for the end of the night showing of that Jason Statham shark film as I've heard it called a few times. And what were my expectations going in? I bet you know, I thought The Meg was going to be awful, but I did go in thinking that maybe there'd be a good time in there somewhere, so was there enjoyment lurking in the depths of this film, I guess you'll have to keep reading and find out.

The Meg opens with a prologue that wouldn't feel out of place in a in a 90's Godzilla movie, as a nuclear submarine rescue comes under siege from some unseen creature, and Statham makes the tough call of abandoning his friends and the remaining sub crew to the deep just in time as the sub implodes. Something that really works about this prologue is how well it shows the effect this event has on Statham, as he sees the unseen creature cave in the sub's outer hull like it's made of cardboard, and the sequence does a decent job of showing the decision playing on his mind, as he silently contemplates the ramifications of leaving everyone else behind, a decision we, the audience know to be the right one, but that naturally leads to off screen conflict which leads to Statham ending up where we next see him; living off the grid in Thailand and spending his days getting drunk. It's at this point that we are introduced to the crew of Mana One, which is a good time to discuss characters. Statham's Jonas is our lead, and what really do you need to know, it's Jason Statham, he's a no nonsense badass that gets shit done, the film does begin to play with a more psychological aspect to Jonas, leading to a very effective scene when he gets back in the water for the first time, but when the Meg shows up, that gets forgotten, and he just becomes a badass, complete with quips. This isn't necessarily bad however because of how likable he is, something the film cunningly establishes through his interactions with the little girl who's on the research station for some reason. The reason is that her mum works on the station, Li Bingbing's Suyin, who you'd never guess is forty five from looking at her, but I digress, she's our leading lady for The Meg, and she's serviceable; the sort of strong, independent fish (how meta's that) that gets in a sub and takes matters into her own hands, most notably with a fun little sequence involving a shark cage, and the obligatory final battle with the Meg. But naturally, she's not just Statham's partner in crime, she's also the obligatory romantic interest, and what's weird about this is how understated it is, and how well it works as a result. It plays out less like two people falling in love and more like two people having crushes on each other and being really bad at hiding it, and for some reason this wasn't incredibly cringe worthy, in fact it was kind of cute, though it strangely lacks the payoff you'd expect, as Statham never gets to kiss the girl, not even at the end of the film, instead we just get a heavy implication that they fuck after the credits roll, which I suppose has the same effect as a kiss.

The rest of the film's characters however are where things take a dive, pun intended, because I had to IMDB the film just for Suyin's name, but then I had to IMDB everyone else because it occurred to me that past Jonas and Mac, I didn't remember any names from the film. The problem here is that the film doesn't really have much of a memorable or fun cast, rather it has exactly the kind of people you'd expect in this situation, you have the brilliant, composed and articulate head scientist, the rich idiot, the black guy, the edgy chick, the fat guy and the ex-wife, I'm sure that if you've ever watched a film before, you could very easily fill in the blanks there. You could argue however that this works in the film's favour, and I will now kind of do that, because these characters are all completely functional in their respective roles, but not one of them stand out in any meaningful way, and when they start dying, which you know they will, their deaths lack impact for the most part. The fat Asian guy whose name is Toshi according to IMDB has a moment of self-sacrifice that's pretty sombre, and is effectively foreshadowed beforehand, but later in the film when another character tries the heroic death thing, it has nowhere near the same impact, and as the film forgets him, so does the audience. And at no point does the film break the mould, the people you'd expect to die, with a couple of exceptions, end up dying, and the film never breaks the unspoken rule of cheesy movies of never killing dogs and or children, which is, if you couldn't tell simply from hearing the premise, an indication that this film is cheesy. This is, as I alluded to earlier, where the complete lack of audience interest can be interpreted as a strength, as with less time spent developing the characters, more room is freed up for the monster, and in this regard, The Meg is a solid monster movie. The plot has no big twists and turns, it's very simple and straight forward, science wakes up a monster, and the heroes must now find and kill it before it can find and kill them, don't expect any Lovecraftian overtones like Godzilla or nail biting suspense like Jaws, because it really isn't like that, neither of those films ended with a pun either, or had a character sing a song from a Pixar film, but The Meg has both of those things.
 
So it's not as good as Godzilla or Jaws, that's basically what I just said, and yeah, that's true, in fact given what I've said so far, this should be a pretty mediocre film, but I've seen many mediocre films over just the past couples of months, most notably Pacific Rim: Uprising, and I wanted to like that film, but I'm being very honest when I say that coming out of The Meg, I had a massive smile on my face, far bigger than the one on my face when I came out of Pacific Rim: Uprising, and that's because The Meg succeeds in one very important way that Pacific Rim: Uprising fails, it's fun. The earlier scenes of the film in the trench and then later with the shark cage have a good amount of suspense to them, even if they're over reliant on jump scares, the visual effects are surprisingly good for a film of this nature, and while the shark is unremarkable in its appearance, which is admittedly a nitpick on my part, the scenes where it's on screen and bringing the carnage are very entertaining. More important than the design though is that it doesn't have any kind of personality, which is weird, because this film isn't scared of venturing into the absurd, so why don't they make their Meg look nuts and give it some kind of malicious personality, even monsters like the Indominus from Jurassic World has some degree of personality, so why not the Meg, but I suppose a monster whose job it is to eat things indiscriminately doesn't need much in the way of development. And the finale where Jonas and Suyin take the Meg on in a fight is brilliant, it's stupid, but it's brilliant, it's exactly what I expected and wanted out of this film, and I was very satisfied. I have some more nitpicks though, mainly the already mentioned issue I have that the Meg isn't a very remarkable monster in its appearance or behaviour, again, this isn't Jaws, but also how, for some reason, this Shark film is a 12. Why on earth is this film, of all films, not a 15, it's bizarre that I've now had this issue with two films this year, but why not make this film 15, why not have gratuitous gore, it's a sci fi film about Jason Statham hunting a prehistoric shark, why not have even more fun with that premise. The film's fine without the gore, I just think it would have been more fun with, the character deaths would have certainly been more impactful if their deaths were horrific, but in the end the most horrific death in the film is that of a baby whale, I guess I'm just a sadist like that. And on a final note, as just an observation, the film is a collaborative effort between a few American and Chinese film companies, and when you're watching the film you can really tell because the film makes no secret about it, it panders, a lot, like, Transformers level pandering, and that obviously doesn't ruin the film, but it can get a bit distracting in this distinctly American monster movie when there's suddenly a Chinese pop song playing. But hey, at least no one's accused this film of whitewashing yet, not saying it won't happen, I'm sure some progressives actually do have brains, and this film is a Chinese-American film set in China but with a white guy in the lead role, and for some reason I'm suddenly thinking about The Great Wall, can't imagine why.

Chew on This
I really should have hated The Meg; it's a dumb, cheesy film that, like its titular monster, feels very out of its time, films like The Meg don't really get made anymore outside of the realm of low budget direct-to-video, and usually there's a good reason for that, they suck, but almost certainly against my better judgement, I found myself really enjoying The Meg. Yes, its characters are flat, but they get the job done and the Meg and Statham steal the show anyway, yes, most of its good ideas are under developed and underutilised, but at least the film tried. It has good visual effects, the screenplay is dripping with the rankest cheese, and the film has a much more relaxed, light hearted tone than pretty much every other shark film made as of late that didn't premiere on Syfy. The Meg doesn't strive for greatness, probably because had it done so, it would have failed, and I will concede that The Meg isn't particularly remarkable or of a high standard of filmmaking, but I still had a big smile on my face for most the movie, I still loved it all the same. The Meg is a fun time and I'd gladly watch it again, and it's definitely worth watching.