If you loathed the first Meg, I am telling you that you will be wasting your time seeing the sequel as it is essentially the same as the first film just with better choices. If you’re like me however and enjoyed the first Meg, you’re probably baffled by the vicious slander the sequel has received and you’re right to be because in some respects, The Meg 2: The Trench is better than the original.

Set several years after the 2018 monster hit, The Meg 2 sees Jason Statham lead an expedition into the unexplored depths of the Mariana Trench. There, he and his team encounter not one but three megalodons. The megs trap the explorers in the uncharted region where, to make matters worse, Statham discovers an illegal mining operation captained by an old nemesis of his.

Oh, and there’s a giant octopus.

The Characters

No one should expect deep insights into the human condition from a film called The Meg 2. What’s important is how long the humans are on screen, how fun they are to watch and how they get us to the sharks.

They are on screen for most of the runtime but fortunately they don’t ever slow things down. Statham has adopted Meiying, the 8-year-old girl from the first film. We learn that her mother died a few years ago and if you can get over the blatant writing-out of Li Bingbing’s character, you’ll enjoy the father-daughter dynamic Statham has with the now 14-year-old Meiying. The sequel knows Statham’s character can’t just do another the-best-shark-hunter-there’s-ever-been routine so I think the effort to spice things up with his character is admirable.

Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) is the mercenary leading the illegal mining operation. We learn that he and his people have a mole aboard Statham’s research facility, creating a hilariously obvious whodunit subplot that intercuts with Statham’s underwater exploits. For a stereotypically corrupt mercenary, Montes is surprisingly entertaining as a character. As well as being a highly competent criminal, he has a girlfriend who he loves very much. The brief time they share together is unironically more wholesome than most of Statham and Meiying’s scenes.

Not only does The Meg 2 double the sharks but doubles the comic relief and amazingly, none of them are as excruciating to watch as you would fear.

DJ (Page Kennedy), the boisterous engineer from the first Meg, is back and it’s a welcome return. Our other comic relief is found in Jiuming (Wu Jing), Meiying’s uncle who has inherited the research facility established in the first film. His comic relief spawns from his innocent naivety regarding the megalodons. He’s confident that it’s possible to domesticate the prehistoric sharks and develop a bond with them. This confidence often lands him in nail-biting scenarios involving the megalodons, making his obliviously chipper demeanour bewildering as well as amusing.

The Action and The Horror

One thing The Meg 2 does better than the first one is its handling of its underwater sequences.

The word ‘Trench’ is in the title for a reason. The entirety of the first two acts take place in the Mariana Trench and they take full advantage of the environment. The three megs, the octopus and Montes are not the only threats to Statham and his crew. The Meg 2 reminds you that the Mariana Trench is deep, really deep, and if your equipment is not at 100% your life’s on the line. Low oxygen supplies and far distances between pressurised interiors plague our heroes. In these scenes they are not fighting a hungry animal or a greedy tyrant, just the elements. When I saw the first trailer for The Meg 2 I was worried it looked too much like the first one and while there are some similarities, sequences like these really make the sequel stand out on its own.

More time in the trench means more time to hide for the megalodons. The scenes in the Mariana Trench made for the most tense moments in the first Meg as the creature was completely cloaked by the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean. There were some anxious moments later on but when the megalodon is in shallow water during broad daylight the anticipation of it swooping out of nowhere is gone. Fortunately, The Meg 2 has these moments in spades.  

When one appears, no matter how suddenly or violently, it’s the least of your worries because you know there are two others out there that are yet to appear, and when all three do appear it’s just amazing.

When the third act kicks off things definitely start getting derivative. It’s essentially the climax of the first one again, which is far from a letdown but the inventiveness and creativity from the first two acts just isn’t there.

You can’t say The Meg 2 is worse than The Meg 1 as they are merely different takes on the same idea. Not completely different I’ll say but The Meg 2 is a good sequel in that it’s almost exactly the same as the original but noticeably better. If you liked the first Meg I can’t recommend this enough, if you didn’t then don’t waste your time watching it and panning it. It honestly doesn’t deserve it.

I give The Meg 2: The Trench a mega 7 out of 10.