Meg 2: The Trench Parent Guide

After Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) and his team discovered, unintentionally released, and then killed a megalodon, life hasn’t gotten any easier. Suyin Zhang (played in the first film by Li Bingbing) has died, and Jonas is caring for her daughter Meiying. Raising a 14-year-old is even more difficult on a remote research station, especially since Jonas’s time is occupied by errands and missions. The two are still close, but, like most 14-year-olds, Meiying thinks she’s ready for a lot more risk than Jonas does…so she sneaks onto his submersible.

As the submersible passes the thermoclime and descends into the oceanic trench where the first megalodon was found, the onboard humans discover some much, much, larger sharks and a secret mining facility. When they start investigating, a massive explosion triggers a rockslide which pins their submersible, startling the megalodons. Thousands of meters underwater, surrounded by prehistoric sharks the size of an office building, and without stable surface communications, it’s going to take quick thinking and hard work to stay alive long enough to figure out what’s really going on down there.

Not only was The Meg one of the first films I ever reviewed for this site, it’s still one of my favorites – I think I’ve watched it five times. It’s such a delightfully over-the-top summer shark movie that it’s hard not to catch some of the film’s infectious enthusiasm for its remarkably silly premise. More to the point, the first film chugs along like a model train, hitting all the stops you expect and without slowing down to see the flaws in the paint. Meg 2, on the other hand, can’t manage to get out of its own way.

Where the first film felt direct and tightly timed, The Trench has all the polish and precision of that homework assignment you finished in a sweaty panic, several hours before the due date. Some of the ideas and characters survive some of the time, but more frequently situations just seem to happen around the characters because the screenwriter thought it sounded cool. Since the characters’ choices don’t seem to have much impact on their outcomes, it becomes hard to care about what’s going on – even with massive sharks floating around.

If you saw the first film, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect in this one – the violence we associate with prehistoric critters coming up to visit, a little bit of cussing, and brief social drinking. And if you’re ok with that, you might still manage to have a decent time here. The movie can’t quite compete with its predecessor, but as completely (and I mean completely) brainless summer blockbuster, it manages to have a little fun. The key to enjoying this movie is low expectations, a short memory, and an even shorter attention span. All in all, a real winner for teenagers.