Meg 2 - The Trench

The Trench Back
Of Votre Doom

Meg 2 - The Trench
Directed by Ben Wheatley
USA/China  2023 Apelles Entertainment
UK cinema release print

Warning: Slight spoilers highlighting some fun stuff.... if you read it, you’ll want to go see this to make sure I’m not making this stuff up.

Wow... what can I say? I wasn’t expecting this. I kinda half enjoyed The Meg (reviewed here) but I wasn’t particularly looking for a sequel. However, one was announced and, when I heard that famous British director Ben Wheatley was coming on to direct, well... I had to see how he would be able to handle this kind of big budget, schlocky movie and, boy, he did not disappoint. Meg 2 - The Trench is based on another of Steve Alten’s Meg novels, this one called The Trench. Since I still haven’t read any of these (yet, I’ll get to them), I don’t know how close the movie version is to the source novel (not that close, I would guess) but, it has to be said that this movie is everything I was hoping for from the first movie, which it kinda failed to deliver in regards to my expectations back in 2018.

Yup, Jason Statham is back as ‘eco protector’ Jonas Taylor and a fair few of the original cast are also back including Cliff Curtis as Mac (who is an actor I’m not seeing enough of). This one is an all out rollercoaster... err... no... make that waterslide... of absolute silliness and brutal action but, unlike the first movie, it doesn’t insult the intelligence of the audience and actually plays more like everyone’s ‘in on the joke’ in regards to the over the top nature of the narrative. And it’s also a few action/suspense/nature attacks movies rolled into one with clear demarcations between the various segments which, sounds like it could get boring but no, it’s actually quite a solid piece of movie making and it manages to segue into each different style of genre quite effortlessly.

So, following an ‘there’s always a bigger fish’ pre-creds sequence set in pre-historic times (which was used in the trailers), the opening post-title card set piece shows Jason Statham infiltrating a ship at sea with a hostile crew who are dumping toxic waste in the ocean. It’s basically ‘the Stath’ versus dozens of armed crewmen as he manages to escape from the vessel with the photographic evidence of their shady deeds... which involves a pretty well choreographed chase/fight sequence which would not look out of place in one of The Transporter movies. And yeah... you can quote me on saying this movie plays just like The Transporter VS shark, for sure.

Okay, so after this we get the usual meet the crew and main characters set up before two mini submarines of people, Statham included, are stranded past a trench in the sea... followed by some big Megaladon’s who are hunting them... and then they find a shady bunch of villains destroying their shady mining operation down there, which they discover they have helped fund and equip due to a person... or actually persons plural... who have betrayed them and who are working towards evil ends.

Their subs are wrecked but the two surviving teams of the good guy squad manage to walk to the now abandoned enemy station across the ocean floor... just like the ‘team good guy’ squad did in the excellent Underwater (reviewed here) a few years ago. But then they are trapped there for a while with no hope of escape (until one presents itself)... but by now the good guys are hemorrhaging team mates (not to mention finding some of them are on team bad guy now). So this is all the ‘hold your breath’ underwater survival part of the movie.

Then a handful of survivors escape back to ‘camp good guy’ base, which has been overtaken by bad guys and so they need to rescue their friends in an ‘infiltrate and escape’ section of the movie. Meanwhile, a load of Megs plus some other new species they encountered in ‘the trench’, such as dino-lizard fish things which are also quite fast on land... and a giant octopus... have followed them and when the remaining protagonists escape to a holiday resort called Fun Island, the final section of the movie starts up... as it’s good guys vs bad guys vs civilians vs various creatures who all want to eat everyone indiscriminately.

And it’s awesome... you will see such sights as ‘The Stath’ luring sharks out on his wet bike so he can use his jury-rigged exploding harpoons against them, an exploding helicopter crash, a humongous and amazingly well executed giant octopus vs shark scrap and Jason Statham wielding a giant, exploded helicopter rotor blade as a lethal weapon in a hand to hand combat moment with a big Meg. My only real criticism is what looks like a remnant of a former script turning up in the movie. There’s a scene early on where these new pressure exo-suits which can multiply a persons strength into superheroic proportions are introduced, however... although the suits are definitely worn in one sequence, their specialist properties are not actually used in any scene so, yeah, I’m guessing it’s a hangover from an earlier drat where the suits were put to more practical use but, who knows for sure... and who would be willing to tell?

But, honestly people, what’s not to like about all of this? It’s big and dumb but it’s been put together by a very smart director this time around so... it certainly knows it’s big and dumb and everybody’s  having fun with it. And as far as I’m concerned, that includes the audience... I was absolutely grinning at the ‘suspend your disbelief’ audacity of the movie at times and, yeah, I had way more fun with it than I did with, say, this year's entries into the Indiana Jones (reviewed here) and Mission Impossible (reviewed here) franchises, for sure. If you like silly movies with lots of action, ridiculous dialogue and lots of mayhem, then you really should take a look at Meg 2 - The Trench. It’s got a lot going for it as far as I can see and I’ll be snapping up the Blu Ray of this one pretty quickly.