- UK release: August 2018
- Director: Jon Turteltaub · Writers: Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber
- Studio / distributor: Warner Bros.; Gravity Pictures; Di Bonaventura Pictures
- Genre: Creature-feature action thriller · Runtime: 113 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Jason Statham (The Transporter, The Italian Job) as Jonas Taylor; Li Bingbing (Resident Evil: Retribution, Transformers: Age of Extinction) as Suyin; Rainn Wilson (The Office) as Morris; Cliff Curtis (Sunshine, Training Day) as Mac
- Rotten Tomatoes: 46% critics / 42% audience · My rating: 7.5 / 10
The shark film has spent forty years living in the shadow of one perfect example, and every entry since has had to decide whether to compete with Jaws or quietly ignore it. The Meg picks the third option, which is to swim straight past the argument with a prehistoric monster the size of a fishing trawler and Jason Statham strapped to the front of it. This is a creature feature that knows exactly what it is selling, and the smartest thing about it is that it never once pretends to be selling anything else.
The setup
A deep-sea research station, funded by a smirking tech billionaire, sends a crew below what everyone assumed was the floor of the Pacific, only to discover that the floor was a cloud layer and the real deep is a warm, hidden world underneath. Something very old has been living down there undisturbed. When the dive goes wrong and a craft is pinned on the bottom, the station calls in Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), a burnt-out rescue diver who once swore he saw exactly this kind of thing and lost his career insisting on it. The descent does not just trap people. It opens a door, and a 75-foot megalodon comes up through it towards a great deal of open water and a great many swimmers. The plot from there is a chase, and the film is honest enough not to dress it up as anything cleverer.
The cast
Statham is the entire load-bearing wall here, and he carries it with the dry, unbothered authority he has made his own. He plays Jonas as a man who is tired rather than tortured, which is a better choice than the brooding alternative, and he lands the few jokes the script gives him without winking at the camera. Li Bingbing gives Suyin more spine than the damsel role the genre usually defaults to, and she and Statham generate a low-key, teasing chemistry that the film is wise enough not to overheat. Rainn Wilson has the most fun as the billionaire money behind the station, all nervous bravado curdling into self-interest the moment the water gets choppy, and Cliff Curtis brings a grounded steadiness to the operations chief that keeps the control-room scenes from tipping into farce. Nobody is stretching, but nobody is sleepwalking either, and the ensemble plays the absurdity straight, which is the only way this works.
The craft
Jon Turteltaub, who spent the last decade on the National Treasure films, directs this with the same unfussy, crowd-pleasing competence, and Tom Stern’s photography gives the open-water sequences a clean, sunlit clarity that makes the shark’s scale read properly when it finally surfaces. The creature itself is rendered well, a slab of grey muscle that moves with real weight, and the film stages its set pieces with a showman’s sense of timing: a shark cage, a glass tunnel, a crowded beach, each one a clearly built situation rather than a smear of digital chaos. Harry Gregson-Williams scores it with more conviction than the material strictly demands. The 12A rating tells you the limits up front, and the film works inside them cheerfully, trading the red water of harder shark films for scale, suspense and the occasional well-judged shock. At 113 minutes it never sags, because it always has the next bigger problem ready to put in the water.
How it stacks up
The obvious yardstick is Jaws, and The Meg is sensible enough not to reach for it. Spielberg’s film was a thriller about people and the thing you could not see; this is a monster movie about a thing you very much can see, and it belongs instead with Deep Blue Sea, Renny Harlin’s gleefully silly 1999 shark picture, and with the man-versus-prehistoric-spectacle of Jurassic World. It is broader than Lake Placid and far less interested in its own cleverness. Where it earns its place is in committing fully to the premise without the smirking apology that sinks so many knowingly daft films. It wants you to enjoy a giant shark, and it builds an honest, well-paced machine for doing exactly that.
Critics versus the rest of us
The reviews are cool, sitting around 46% with critics and a touch lower with audiences, and the recurring complaint is that the film is silly, broad and a little toothless for a 75-foot killing machine. All of that is true, and none of it is really a criticism of what the film set out to do. The critics are reviewing the shark film they wanted; the audience that turns up for The Meg on a wet Saturday is after the one it actually is. That gap between the press and the multiplex is the whole story of this genre, and I land on the multiplex side of it without much hesitation.
Verdict
I value rewatchability above almost anything, and this is a profoundly rewatchable film: bright, fast, built around a genuinely game Statham performance, and entirely free of the self-importance that makes so much summer spectacle a chore. It is not aiming for an award and it will not get near one. It does not need to. It sets out to put a giant shark on a big screen, point a sardonic action star at it, and send everyone home grinning, and it does that with more craft and better timing than its reputation allows. I have already watched it more than once, which is the most honest review I can give it. 7.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now. The bigger the screen, the bigger the shark.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the giant shark did good enough business worldwide to earn a follow-up, Meg 2: The Trench (2023), which brought Statham back, added a second monster or two, and leaned even harder into the knowing daftness. The original has settled into a comfortable life as reliable streaming and rainy-afternoon viewing, and it now sits on digital and disc, drifting on and off the major streaming platforms depending on region. It remains the better-paced of the two.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate threat, occasional bloody moments, action violence. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Moderate action violence includes humans fighting off sharks with harpoons and other weapons. There are occasional bloody images in the aftermath of violent events or when people sustain injuries as marine vessels are tossed around.
Threat and horror: Moderate threat includes shark attacks on people in boats or trapped in underwater vessels, or enjoying themselves in a beach resort unaware of the danger they face.
Language: There is mild bad language (‘bastard’, ‘shit’, ‘asses’, ‘son of a bitch’, ‘pissed it off’, ‘fricking’, ‘God’, ‘hell’, ‘damn’, and ‘Jesus’) and infrequent mild innuendo.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
