Statham being Statham saves the film from drowning in tedium

Hold your breath, The Meg has arrived. Yes, the modern B-movie advertised for months as a bad but fun experience with Jason Statham fighting a massive prehistoric shark is finally hitting cinemas. Statham plays expert sea-diver Jonas Taylor who explores the untouched depths of the Pacific Ocean, specifically the Mariana Trench, which is home to an abundance of ocean life.

After losing half his team in a disastrous dive, Jonas refuses to go back into the water – convinced a large and dangerous creature, the merciless Megalodon shark, is lurking down there. When a second team dive down and get stuck, Jonas comes out of retirement to save them, but ends up releasing the Megalodon from its sealed ecosystem. The Meg rises to the surface.

For a film that’s marketed on how much fun you’ll have, The Meg doesn’t offer many reasons to be excited or surprised. There’s the textbook capitalist arsehole, played by Rainn Wilson (horrendously cast), who wants to catch and kill the Meg for profit; you’ve got the idea of tracking the shark, in a modernised version of the barrel-system in Jaws; and the Meg, of course, visits a beach bursting with avid splashers. It’s a predictable turn of events, made all the more disappointing by the Meg’s lukewarm sense of havoc. The shark isn’t scary, which may be the fault of a 12A rating – permitting only pale glimpses of violence. Sure, swimmers are pulled into its mouth, but that’s no scarier than a kid’s cartoon.

There are funny moments, mostly in the dialogue (which feels intentionally terrible), and Statham being Statham saves the film from drowning in tedium. But it’s a mindless, over-budgeted, bonkers action movie that’s nowhere near as fun as it pretends to be.