The Meg Review

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.