<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by John Turteltaub. Starring Jason Statham, Bingbing Li, Winston Chao, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Robert Taylor, Cliff Curtis, Masi Okay

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes

With shark movies you know what to expect and you’re looking to be thrilled and scared. The Meg gives you what you expect but it’s not very thrilling and certainly not terrifying either.

We go for movies like The Meg thinking about other films like Jaws and Deep Blue Sea. Even Blake Lively’s The Shallows was a decent stab at the shark film genre. Yes, we know people will get eaten up and some will survive and the ultimate goal is to kill the big, bad sharks. But the set up, the acting, the direction, the intelligent writing all go to make a new film in the genre different from the others.

The Meg was made with China as a target audience, hence the presence of several Chinese actors in the film. We’re seeing this happen with so many Hollywood releases nowadays simply because China has the money to fund new productions and they love being associated with the film industry.

Sometimes the attempt to introduce Chinese culture and characters seems forced. The Meg does seem that way purely because they have another white female character who used to be the hero’s ex (Jessica McNamee) in it. So Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) has to save her, but with the help of Marine scientist Suyin (Bingbing Li).

They’re all on a research station in the middle of the Chinese Sea looking for the new ‘deepest part of the ocean’, when they uncover a lost marine world that is home to some prehistoric ‘monsters’.  And in true human fashion, going where they shouldn’t and being led by greed – namely billionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson) – they upset a great big Megalodon and let it out into the world.

It’s terribly slow at points and the production values aren’t very good. The humour is tacky, just like the CGI. What Jessica McNamee and her ex-wife character is doing here I have no idea. And for people who’ve just been attacked by a giant shark, at times, they seem all too complacent and nonchalant. Statham is his usual self, Bingbing Li tries her best with English, the token black guy DJ (Page Kennedy) becomes so irritating at one point you want him to be next in the shark’s mouth. The little girl (Shuya Sophia Cai) was the biggest and best thing about the movie.

The scene where the Meg barrels through a beach packed with people should elicit terror but is simply silly.

The Meg has done well at the box office because people wanted a great big scare. But they’ll walk away disappointed by this cheap production that isn’t even ‘a B-movie so bad it’s good.’

PS: The movie is based on a book by Steve Alten.