Review of The Meg (2018) by Michael M — 10 Aug 2018

I know I'm in the minority here, but I've been waiting over a decade for this movie. Long story short, I've wanted a big budget megalodon movie ever since I learned they were a thing, and an adaptation of The Meg seemed like our best chance of getting one. I've suffered through piles of SyFy channel Saturday afternoon drivel just to get my megalodon fix waiting for this day. When the movie started I genuinely couldn't believe I was watching it. So understand that's where I'm coming from here. That being said, oh my god I love this movie!

Objectively speaking, this movie has some problems. Problems that are a little hard to ignore. It's why I ultimately can't give it a higher star ranking than I am despite the fact that part of me really wants to. I'm not talking about the weird Marvel-level technology, the questionable science, or the fact that Jason Statham is a scientist. I was honestly on board with all that. Really about 10 minutes in I said to myself "okay, so it's a 90s movie", and once I realized that I was on board. Seriously if this movie had been made a few decades ago it would have had far cheesier effects and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger in Statham's role, I guarantee it. Once you go in with that headspace though, I was willing to forgive it of these goofy choices and some of the hokey dialogue. What I was less willing to forgive was the nearly 40 minute stretch at the beginning before we see the shark, which makes some of that questionable science and hokey dialogue a little harder to swallow. For that time we're mostly left with getting to know the characters, but to the movies credit they're actually decent characters. I mean they're not the best, but I did like them, and there were at least a few whose survival I was rooting for.

Once we get to the shark though, the movie does start to get going. The attacks are on and off for a while until one major moment that even though I sort of saw it coming did still manage to shock me, and from then on it's just a roller coaster ride until its completely absurd ending that was 20 degrees of ridiculous and I totally ate it up.

The Meg might just be my critical blind spot because it's just that movie I've been waiting so long for. I've wanted a giant shark movie for so long that anything above the level of Shark Attack 3 or Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is going to seem like gold. And yeah, that is definitely part of it. Critically speaking, The Meg could have gone farther with its b-movie plot. It could have gone harder with the gore, it could have gone more extreme with the action. But you know what? Shut up! What we got is still pretty godamn awesome! Maybe 3 megalodon movies later I'll look back at this one and think "eh, it's not so great," but right now, it's exactly what I needed.