Ben Wheatley undoubtedly blew some cinephile minds a few years ago when he was announced as the director of “Meg 2: The Trench,” a follow-up to 2018’s fun-enough August blockbuster “The Meg.” Turns out Wheatley’s attempt at being a popcorn salesman ain’t so good, but the pitch must have been spectacular: sea explorers navigating unchartered darkness and facing its monsters like “Alien”; massive, unforeseen creatures like “King Kong“; a bombastic human buffet like “Jurassic Park”; a big freakin’ shark à la “The Meg,” but now with even more sharks, with a pre-packaged Jason Statham kicking their tails one at a time. On paper, Wheatley’s storied background with action and character (“Free Fire” and “High Rise”) only adds to such a project’s curiosity. But though all those sequences made it to the final product, Wheatley often executes them with an amateur’s grace.
READ MORE: ‘Meg 2: The Trench’ Trailer: Ben Wheatley Directs Jason Statham In The Underwater Monster Sequel
Based on Steve Alter’s book “The Trench,” “Meg 2: The Trench” is about a group of explorers venturing to new territories of the deep sea, inspired by what they already know about megalodon sharks. After team members (like ones played by Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, and Skyler Samuels) set up a base on sea level, a few of the crew (including Jason Statham’s hero Jonas, the project’s funding billionaire Jiuming, his 14-year-old niece Meiying, and a handful of barely sketched characters played by Melissanthi Mahut, Kiran Sonia Sawar, and Felix Mayr) venture down thousands of feet below to the Mariana Trench. There, they see some creatures who have never been witnessed with human eyes, but they also learn about a secret mining station that’s part of a nefarious, greedy human scheme (and managed by a lonely villain played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta). When the miners attack our heroes and infiltrate their base, “Meg 2: The Trench” becomes a scatterbrained scuffle between good and bad humans, with some hungry, massive sea creatures in wait. 
It’s hard sometimes watching “Meg 2: The Trench” to believe that we’re still getting shark movies on the big screen after the dull wreckage of so many “Sharknado” sequels and rip-offs. But then you see Statham doing pull-ups to Queen’s “Under Pressure” on a cargo ship before unleashing some eco-friendly James Bond-ian action against surprised polluters, and it makes a little more sense. “The Meg” was enough of a success, and Statham’s generic power of being the toughest guy on the water against vicious gray blobs with messed-up teeth and fins assisted in that. But in round two, it’s hard not to see Statham’s Jonas as an anchor holding back this franchise from having a more dynamic lead protagonist, one with a less phony sense of lunkhead humor or a hollow heart. This movie pairs him often with a 14-year-old named Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai, returning from “The Meg”), a hopeless shot at drawing sensitivity out of his functional but stiff action figure presence. Even the kind-of joke that Jonas is an environmental hero who nonetheless blows up and spears mega sharks like he’s been training for it loses its luster. 
Statham shares the screen with an even more off-putting action hero, Jiuming (Wu Jing). He’s propped up as a wise daredevil who can also save the day with a tucked-in polo shirt and khakis, and his bravery is often shoved in our faces for our undoubting admiration, like when he initially places himself in the water with his pet megalodon Haiqi, thinking he can use a clicker to stop it from speeding toward him and eating him. Jiuming is like if Richard Attenborough’s character in “Jurassic Park” were also the story’s surprise bad-ass, but “Meg 2” is far too transparent or forceful with Jiuming’s significance. 
“Meg 2: The Trench” is so frustrating that its best aspect—the set-piece-bouncing pacing—creates its biggest flaw. Yes, the movie hardly loses momentum once things get violent both in the Mariana Trench and the above-sea-level base; sometimes it’s an escape movie, sometimes it’s a chase movie. But “Meg 2: The Trench” is constantly underwhelming its latest twist, surprise appearance, or life-or-death situation by rushing to the next problem. It makes the script elements that should pop most—loyalty, the deaths of its unlucky crew members, its brief bouts of ass-kicking—more weightless than they should be. “Meg 2: The Trench” gives its audience so much to be excited about, but always chews each set-piece’s enjoyability in half.
As the story jostles viewers who need to have low expectations or else, its more cliche aspects become even more obvious, like its bland dialogue and lazy character building. Written by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, and Dean Georgaris, “Meg 2: The Trench” is zealously packed with familiar genre devices but handles them with no wit or irony. It’s just more “We have to go without him!” sequences and a comic relief character who says, “Damn,” “Get some!” or “Hell yeah!” 
In not-so-scientific terms, “Meg 2: The Trench” long lacks in “hell yeah” moments, which it should be flourishing with given its premise of Jason Statham fighting massive sharks. A second-act dual chase and fight in the Trench between humans and unseen mega creatures of the deep is too scattered with flurries of violent fish and dim lighting to be enjoyed or simply viewed. And while Statham’s action persona gets a solid assist from some hard-hitting hand-to-hand roundabouts, Wheatley makes them short-lived. “Meg 2: The Trench” only gets generates passing “hell yeah” glory in the third act, as with a POV shot inside a meg’s mouth as it slurps up human chum and a slow-motion image of Statham hurling a spear bomb at a shark, an image fit for a Mountain Dew-sponsored art museum, or a trapper keeper. 
“Meg 2: The Trench” is an Act Three movie, in that it finally gets to the good dumb stuff in its finale when Wheatley, his sharks, and dinosaur-like mega lizards tear up a place called “Fun Island,” a buffet of tourists conveniently not too far from the base where our human heroes and villains have been fighting each other. It’s the moment when Wheatley says “screw it” to making a formal “Jurassic Park” audition and just throws everything in at once, adding in explosions and lucky shots and a helicopter and hoping it leaves viewers on a high. It doesn’t make much sense, including the background humans who sometimes run away from the water or toward it or do nothing while a mega octopus cancels their vacation. That’s how unique of a weird, massive mess “Meg 2: The Trench” is: not even its extras know where to go. [C]
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