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A little over a year ago after the merger with Discovery, Warner Brothers announced it would not be releasing Batgirl as a cost-cutting measure. This would allow them to exploit a loophole where they could take a 100 percent tax write-off on the project because it was in the wake of a business acquisition. A reason was never given, however, in the immediate aftermath it was speculated that it had something to do with the quality of the film. With the benefit of hindsight, there is no way that was the case because there is no way that Batgirl could possibly have been worse than Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, or Meg 2: The Trench, with Meg 2: The Trench being among the worst movies to come out in 2023.
Meg 2: The Trench follows Jonas (Jason Statham) as he goes with a team to the bottom of a trench to see what’s down there. Things happen and a few megalodons escape with a giant octopus (as tends to happen) and Jonas has to stop them from killing a lot of people.
Movies like this are designed to be visual spectacles, however, this one fails on that at every conceivable level. The underwater effects are unimpressive in a post-Aquaman, The Little Mermaid, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever world. Not only are they unimpressive for a theatrical release, they would have been unimpressive for a direct-to-DVD Walmart monster knock-off or mid-2000s SyFy original movie. The assets for the titular megalodon are constantly reused, none of the kills look particularly impressive, and there is never a sense of anxiety that should come from a movie like this because even within the confines of the movie none of the characters are in any sense of danger.
The narrative is completely nonsensical as well with some of the worst dialogue to grace a cinema screen in the last decade. About a dozen times in the movie, dialogue is regurgitated back and forth between characters with an “I’ll do (thing)”, “No, I’ll do (thing)” cadence and the entire film feels like it could have been spit out by an AI chatbot without anyone revising it. There are so many plot holes in the movie that things like the laws of physics don’t apply considering at one point a character swims 25,000 feet underwater and is totally fine because he has a deviated septum. No protagonist character has a motivation, the antagonist doesn’t have a motivation, and the lack of motivation for both sides somehow doesn’t line up even though neither side has a good reason for doing anything. It’s almost as if the movie was pitched as “people watched Jason Statham fight a megalodon last time, now let's have him fight three” and that’s it.
If one has respect for their time, Meg 2: The Trench is absolutely a skippable movie. If someone really wants to go to the movies this weekend, see literally anything else playing in the theater, or if you go to the AMC in Stony Brook, sit at the bar and watch HGTV on the TV in the lobby because that would be a better use of two hours. And on a final unrelated (though tangentially related note), Warner Brothers seems entirely disinterested in promoting Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom which is allegedly still coming out in December. This would have been a perfect movie to attach that trailer to.
Final Rating: 0/10
