By: Devyn Nguyen, Ishrak Ramzan
★★★½
The Meg is a summer thriller that released on Aug. 10 to audiences across the United States. The film stars Jason Statham as former rescue diver Jonas Taylor and follows him as he and others attempt to deal with the titular Megalodon.
In the past, Taylor had once been a renowned rescue diver who went deeper than anyone else before. In a particular rescue mission Taylor is forced to leave behind several divers due to an unknown creature attacking their submarine. When Taylor and the survivors resurface, Taylor is questioned on why he left behind some members, to which he responds by saying there was a “thing” in the water. Due to the far fetched story, no one believed Taylor, and Taylor decided to quit his job of being a rescue diver.
Fast forward five years into the future, a group of three international researchers are descending to the bottom of the Marianas Trench to explore what might be a previously undiscovered deeper region. While the crew is researching various new forms of life along the ocean floor, the trio is attacked by an unknown large creature, leaving them stranded at the bottom. With thoughts of saving the crew, the company employing them set out to find a rescue diver capable of saving their members, eventually deciding to contact Taylor.
Although unwilling, Taylor decides to dive once again to save the crew, leading to surprising circumstances in which a megalodon is released from the bottom of the sea floor, setting off the main conflict of the film.
Generally, the plot of The Meg was quite interesting. Although it starts out somewhat predictable, after getting through about a third of the movie, unexpected things start to happen which lead to the viewer being interested once again. There were some cliches in the movie such as the group miraculously having everything they needed to accomplish their goals despite having rushed out minutes before without forming an actual plan.
The acting wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t the worst either. Although the protagonists were chased and attacked by an enormous shark, there wasn’t as much panicking as one would expect from researchers who wouldn’t normally be confronted with life threatening situations like this. It would have been nice to see more dread and questioning as to what to do to defeat the swimming beast.
In addition to the plot, the diverse cast was another strong point of the film. Having a variety of different actors portraying the various characters helped to make the international research station more believable. Chinese megastar Li Bingbing, who played researcher Suyin Zhang, did a particularly good job of selling her role, which was especially important as her character was the second lead of the film.
While The Meg delivers on being a fun summer thriller, it wasn’t great in any one area, and ultimately resigns itself to being just another forgettable B-grade summer flick.