The Meg Review
Shark movies have been making a comeback in recent years,
and The Meg is the one I’ve been
anticipating the longest. It’s based on a series of books by Steve Alten, about
a giant prehistoric shark called Megalodon that survived extinction by living
at the bottom of the Mariana’s trench, and of course it escapes after being
discovered by deep-sea explorers and devours a whole bunch of people. I loved
the premise, and the books read like blockbusters themselves: it was perfect
material to make into a movie. But this film has been in development for over
20 years, so was it worth the wait?
Well, I felt like I was one of the very few people
anticipating this movie. The trailers make it look like a big, dumb monster
movie…and, yeah, that’s exactly what it is. That’s what the books are (despite
trying to remain grounded in some science, which the movie tries as well), and
I didn’t expect any less from the film adaptation.
The Meg is a fun
and pretty well-crafted monster movie. It’s not trying to be Jaws, nor should it. In fact, I was
surprised by how few Jaws references
there were. I think I spotted more references to other movies like Jurassic Park, Aliens, The Abyss, and
even Lake Placid. You might call them
references, or blatant copying, but either way, I didn’t mind.
I’ll briefly touch on how much it adapts from the first
book. The answer: barely anything. You have the basic premise of the shark
living in the trench, the shark escaping and eating people, many of the
character names come from the book, and that’s about it. Main character Jonas
Taylor, played by Jason Statham, is not a scientist like in the book, which I
was glad about, because I could not have bought Statham as book version Jonas,
but this movie version works much better for the kind of movie it’s trying to
be.
There’s some horror stuff here, but mostly it’s played up as
fun action. And for the most part, the action scenes are fairly original, well-enough-directed,
and entertaining. It takes a while for the shark to show up, but I wasn’t all
that bothered because, believe it or not, the characters are actually halfway
likable and not annoying or boring. They aren’t really original or particularly
memorable, but it’s a scrappy cast, with Ruby Rose, Li Bingbing, and Rainn
Wilson, among others, all turning in performances ranging from decent-enough to
above-average, and Statham in particular is a solid lead. One thing I did have
trouble with were the Asian characters and their accents. I don’t mean it to be
racist, but having so much important dialogue be delivered by characters who do
not speak clear English was not the best choice and made it a bit unnecessarily
hard to follow at times. 
The effects are inconsistent throughout, but when they’re
great, they really look great, especially for a big cgi shark. For whatever
reason, sharks are very difficult to portray realistically with cgi (perhaps because
of their movements and the speed at which they swim) but the meg looks pretty
good in some shots. Other times, it looks way too fake, but overall, for being
a movie so abundant with cgi, even with other elements aside from the shark, it
looks good.
The pacing is a bit strange, with it feeling somewhat
meandering in the first act, then choppy in the second act, with hiccups
between action scenes that throw off the buildup of tension and momentum, but
when the third act hits and the giant shark starts feeding on swimmers (as
teased in the trailer) you get your money’s worth. There are clever gags,
satisfying payoffs, and funny/scary moments. I have to give huge props to the
humour in this movie. Surprisingly, it’s very funny throughout. I found myself
laughing out loud more than once. The humour isn’t cheap or stale, and it made
for an unexpected highlight.
As for the negatives, the pacing was definitely one, and the
overall lack of the meg in the first and second acts was a little
disappointing. Much of the film was predictable, and I’m sure will be to others
who are big monster movie fans, but perhaps won’t be to more general
movie-goers. The very end, which I won’t spoil, I found really poorly done,
stupid, and rather strange. If you see it, you’ll know what I mean.
Ultimately, though, I would recommend checking The Meg out in theaters. It’s a fun
summer monster movie with decent action and characters you actually might root
for (though you’ll really be rooting for the shark the whole time), and
delivers enough of what you’d expect from something with a premise like this to
be satisfyingly entertaining. For the kind of shark movie that it is, I wouldn’t say it’s the best since Jaws, I’d still say The Shallows was a better shark movie overall (despite having a
similarly disappointing ending), but The
Meg holds its own amid Hollywood’s resurgence of giant monster movies, as
well as shark movies. 