The enduring commercial viability of shark movies, almost fifty years after Jaws, mirrors the enduring commercial viability of zombie flicks, though no one, as far as I know, has ever compared the two. As terrifying adversaries go, both sharks and zombies have no particular agency, meaning no evil designs beyond just wanting to eat you. There’s nothing you can do about them except try to kill them. The difference, or at least the difference as it’s developed over the years, is that sharks are still living things that have a place in the natural order, and therefore deserve the acknowledgement that they shouldn’t have to die just because evolution has rendered them, to paraphrase Richard Dreyfuss, the perfect swimming, eating machine. Zombies, however, are dead to begin with. They don’t even deserve to exist. That’s why this most expensive of shark movie franchises, premised on the idea of prehistoric megalodons that are fifty times bigger than conventional sharks still roaming the sea, has to depict a real enemy, usually humans doing bad things, because it’s not the shark’s fault that they eat people. But when they eat bad people, it’s more fulfilling.

In the case of this sequel, the bad guys are an illegal mining operation looking for rare earth minerals in a trench that just happens to be a portal to where megalodons make their home. These people are destroying the earth for money, it’s implied, so their comeuppance is interpreted as nature getting its due. Then again, the first half of the film has relatively little to do with megalodons except that the Chinese research company introduced in the first film (though the franchise is distributed by Warner Bros., the production is Chinese-funded) and headed by Zhang Jiuming (Wu Jing), has captured one and is trying to somehow train it. But first, we have to refind our bearings by introducing the other holdovers from the first installment, rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), who is now a kind of eco-warrior, his engineer friends Mac (Cliff Curtis) and DJ (Page Kennedy), and, most significantly, Zhang’s niece and Taylor’s step-daughter, Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai), who is the film’s designated focal point in that Taylor is invested in saving her from any danger at any cost. 

But the more immediate danger is that mining crew, upon whom Taylor and the others stumble while exploring the trench and Zhang’s meg escapes to pursue them. As it happens, the head of the crew holds a grudge against Taylor for an earlier ecological dustup, and once the two opposing parties interface, there’s lots of loss of equipment and life, resulting in a desperate effort to return to the surface just as a bunch of megalodons, not to mention a giant octopus and some weird lizard-like creatures (there will be dinosaurs), are let loose. The director, Ben Wheatley, who has been praised for his work in horror films that I haven’t seen, doesn’t really get his mojo working until this final battle between the good guys, the bad guys, and the escaped creatures, which is all staged within a hilariously isolated marine resort called Fun Island. Statham gets to go mano-a-fisho with one of the megs while riding a jet ski and using a destroyed helicopter rotor as a harpoon. I know I’m supposed to suspend disbelief, but give me the zombies any day. 

Opens Aug. 25 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Meg 2: The Trench home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Warner Bros. Ent.