Meg (2018)

Meg, the bestselling novel from the late 1990s, spent what felt like an eternity languishing in development hell before finally making it to the screen courtesy of Warner Brothers. The box-office receipts ensured almost immediately that a sequel would follow, with cash registers ringing merrily across the globe. Nowhere was the success more dramatic than in China, where the film swallowed up a cool $50 million during its opening weekend alone.

The production itself had a rather troubled history. At one point Eli Roth, who had established himself as a major figure within modern horror, was attached to direct. Horror fans understandably rejoiced. It seemed that audiences might finally get the terrifying giant-shark movie they had been waiting for, one with genuine horror credentials and a body count worthy of the source material.

Sadly, it was not to be.

Months into production, Roth departed the project amid reports of creative and financial disagreements. Script rewrites followed, directors changed, and a major Chinese financial partner came aboard. With every alteration, the film drifted further away from Steve Alten’s novel and further towards becoming a global crowd-pleaser designed to offend absolutely nobody.

The fingerprints of financial compromise are visible all over the finished product.

The setting was shifted away from California and towards Asian waters, Chinese actors were elevated into key roles, and internationally recognised action workhorse Jason Statham was drafted in for hero duties. John Turteltaub eventually inherited directing responsibilities and with his arrival any lingering hopes of a serious horror film promptly disappeared. What emerged instead was a glossy summer popcorn movie designed for maximum audience appeal. The horror elements were sanded down, the gore was virtually eliminated and the result was a giant shark film in which there is barely a drop of blood to be found.

Enough about the production headaches.

The film itself centres around a state-of-the-art underwater research facility funded by seemingly limitless resources and dedicated to exploring regions of the ocean previously considered inaccessible. When a scientific expedition descends into the abyss and discovers a hidden ecosystem beyond a thermal layer, everything initially appears wondrous and dreamlike.

Then something starts hitting the submersible.

Hard.

The researchers soon find themselves trapped and under attack from an unseen monster, forcing them to send for the one man apparently capable of saving the day. Enter Jason Statham, playing the obligatory rogue rescue diver whose expertise is exceeded only by his ability to look mildly irritated under pressure.

From that point onwards, the giant prehistoric shark known as The Meg begins its assault.

Research stations are battered, vessels are tossed around like toys and countless people find themselves narrowly escaping becoming seafood. Near misses, close shaves and last-second rescues arrive one after another at a relentless pace. The problem is that very few of these sequences leave any lasting impression. They are perfectly competent while they are happening, but somehow evaporate from the memory moments later.

The Meg itself certainly looks impressive, although for a production carrying a reported budget of around $130 million that is hardly an achievement worthy of celebration. One expects the giant shark to look convincing.

The film ultimately barrels towards its inevitable climax in reasonably entertaining fashion and most viewers arriving with modest expectations will probably leave satisfied. Those hoping for scares, suspense or even a little gore, however, may find themselves wondering what the finished product might have looked like had Eli Roth remained in charge and had the script not undergone repeated alterations in pursuit of international box-office success.

The influence of Jaws hangs heavily over the entire enterprise. There are several obvious nods and homages, including the inclusion of a dog named Pippin and a rather heavy-handed recreation of the famous Alex Kintner sequence. The references are impossible to miss and perhaps understandable given that every shark movie since 1975 has been forced to exist in Spielberg’s shadow.

The strategy clearly worked from a financial perspective. The Chinese box office alone justified many of the decisions that shaped the film and demonstrated just how important that market had become. Hollywood had effectively discovered another planet full of potential customers and The Meg represented one of the earliest examples of a blockbuster specifically engineered to appeal to both East and West simultaneously.

Great business perhaps.

Not necessarily great cinema.

Unlike the truly memorable shark films, The Meg never delivers a sequence that lodges permanently in the brain. Spielberg’s Jaws is packed with iconic moments. Even the much-maligned Deep Blue Sea contains scenes that horror fans still discuss decades later. The Meg lacks anything comparable. There isn’t a single sequence that has audiences gripping their armrests, chewing their fingernails or nervously peering into dark water afterwards.

Instead, the film plays more like a glossy action movie with comedic undertones and a giant shark filling the role of the villain.

Jason Statham is perfectly serviceable in the lead role and his Chinese co-stars perform well enough, but the obligatory cute child feels assembled in a Hollywood laboratory rather than resembling an actual human being. Every scene involving her feels meticulously calculated to generate audience affection.

The film also suffers from uneven pacing. At over two hours in length it feels twenty or thirty minutes longer than it really needs to be. To its credit, it never completely falls apart and eventually finds its way towards a reasonably crowd-pleasing finale, albeit one that lacks the excitement, tension and sheer audience-participation that a giant-shark blockbuster ought to inspire.

Alexandre Aja’s wonderfully silly Piranha remake was produced for a fraction of the cost and remains an exponentially more entertaining film. It knew exactly what it was and embraced the madness wholeheartedly. The Meg often feels as though it is trying to please everyone at once and in doing so never fully commits to being either a horror film, an action spectacle or a monster movie.

Still, a shark movie is a shark movie and every summer ought to have one. For the time being, The Meg is sufficient to keep the appetite whetted while waiting for something better to emerge from the depths.

In local terminology, it qualifies comfortably as time pass.

Little more.