The Meg

Sci­en­tists have sug­gest­ed that as much as 95 per cent of the world’s oceans remain unex­plored. For decades we’ve turned to the stars for signs of unchar­tered life rather than the seabed, and as such, the lim­it­less poten­tial for beasts of the deep has inspired lumi­nar­ies such as Her­mann Melville, Guiller­mo del Toro, and er, Antho­ny C Fer­rante to cre­ate their own mythol­o­gy. The chief vil­lain among these aquat­ic adver­saries? Big. Fuck­ing. Sharks.

Swim­ming in the wake of toothy romps like Deep Blue Sea and The Shal­lows – as well as inevitable point of com­par­i­son and sub-genre over­lord Jaws – The Meg sees a team of sci­en­tists based in the Mar­i­ana Trench attempt to uncov­er the mys­ter­ies of the deep. In doing so, they acci­den­tal­ly unleash a 75-foot pre­his­toric behe­moth (Meg is short for ​‘Megladon’, fyi). The only man capa­ble of stop­ping said shark is Jonas Tay­lor (Jason Statham), a gruff res­cue div­er exiled to Thai­land fol­low­ing a botched mis­sion. ​“I don’t dive any­more,” he gri­maces when the team try and recruit him. But it doesn’t take much to change his mind.

Along­side Jonas is a mot­ley crew of half-heart­ed arche­types, from tough-talk­ing tomboy Jax (Ruby Rose) and eccen­tric bil­lion­aire Mor­ris (Rainn Wil­son) to plucky sci­en­tist Suyin Zhang (Li Bing­bing) and her pre­co­cious eight-year-old daugh­ter Mei (Shuya Sophia Cai). An over­stuffed cast leaves char­ac­ters jostling for screen time, and a romance between Jonas and Zhang ends up being amus­ing for all the wrong rea­sons, but it’s hard to blame this on the actors, who all seem to be mak­ing a valiant effort to bring some­thing – any­thing! – to a par­tic­u­lar­ly dry script.

Despite the poten­tial for com­e­dy in such a premise, the only per­son who seems in on the joke is Statham. He plays his char­ac­ter with a world-weary charm and pro­vides most of the film’s intend­ed laughs. Every­thing else about The Meg is very seri­ous, from the deliv­ery of asi­nine dia­logue (“It’s already proven aggres­sive to boats”) to an over­com­pli­cat­ed plot. Yet there aren’t enough thrills and spills to ele­vate it into gen­uine thriller or pulp hor­ror ter­ri­to­ry either – thanks to its fam­i­ly-friend­ly rat­ing the film is even light on gore, and with no char­ac­ters to root for oth­er than Jonas, you’re left not real­ly car­ing who the shark actu­al­ly chomps on.

And, although Jaws proved that you don’t need to give your shark lots of screen­time in order to cre­ate an effec­tive shark movie, The Meg is stingy with its shark-on-Stath action. Dither­ing on whether or not it’s a com­e­dy, thriller, or med­i­ta­tion on cli­mate change, The Meg attempts to do a num­ber of things while suc­ceed­ing at very few of them. So much wast­ed poten­tial leaves direc­tor John Turteltaub’s film feel­ing like a tooth­less effort, floun­der­ing in the shal­lows of the mul­ti­plex ocean.