Creature features are a perennial facet of media. It crosses horror, suspense, mystery, and action all into one, and depending on the kind of film you’re dealing with, it can lend itself to any of those genres more prominently than another. After all, Godzilla would feel more like an epic Action-Adventure flick with horror and mystery elements. In contrast, Crawl is decidedly set as a horror film.
Beyond this, science fiction or fantasy tends to be the umbrella genre for a creature feature. The Meg is more suspense and action than horror and mystery, but it finds a way to balance these four chief genres fairly well across its two halves. With its focus on science-fiction, this, however, is the more dominant genre out of all of them.
Jason Statham stars as Jonas Taylor, a diver who specializes in deep sea search and rescue whose years’ earlier encounter with an unidentified creature forced him to abandon two of his crewmembers trapped in a damaged nuclear submarine. His story is dismissed, and his actions are denounced, even viewed as psychotic, by one of the survivors, Dr. Heller (Robert Taylor), Jonas’ career is derailed entirely. While the creature remains a mystery, it becomes increasingly clear that those who ignored Jonas’ warnings were doomed to pay the price. One of the major themesof The Meg is humanity’s arrogance in its ability to conquer nature, let alone the unknown. Dr. Heller is at the core of this, as are all the scientists in the story. Our search for the answers to the oldest questions puts us in peril all of the time, sometimes without us even realizing it. The Meg highlights this well, amid its other thematic elements, bringing forth a question: can we really control our environment?
The main cast includes Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing), an oceanographer who works aboard the research vessel Mana One; her father, Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chang), the captain of Mana One, and Meiying (Sophia Cai) is Suyin’s daughter. They form a tight-knit family, with Suyin desperately seeking to prove her bona fides to her father, ultimately getting in over her head when she attempts a rescue mission herself. Mac (Cliff Curtis) is the managing researcher of Mana One, Jaxx (Ruby Rose) is one of its engineers alongside DJ (Page Kennedy), Heller has maintained his presence as the facility’s doctor, and all of this is funded by Morris (Rainn Wilson) a billionaire who presents himself as thoughtful and caring – but you know how billionaires are portrayed in media. The crux of the plot comes into play when their submarine is trapped below a thermocline, where the rest of the major characters are stuck for Act One – Lori (Jessica McNamee), a diver and submarine pilot who is also Jonas’ ex-wife, The Wall (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Toshi (Masi Oka) make up Lori’s small crew. Their rescue is what thrusts Jonas back into the story.
A threat lurks under the ocean’s surface beneath the thermocline – a threat that Lori’s crew and the efforts to rescue leads to its escape to the upper depths of the sea: A Megalodon. The titular creature is a long-thought-extinct shark of extreme size capable of tearing its way through the reinforced facility’s underwater and above-water infrastructure, putting everybody in danger no matter where they are.
Its sheer size and scale mean that any proximity to the water is a fatal error for those unlucky enough to be on screen. It ranks staggeringly high as a threat, and the second act is spent figuring out how to potentially kill it. Not just to protect themselves but everybody else.
The crew of Mana One is treated to a front-row street of the kind of carnage that a megalodon can wreak when left unattended to. Their efforts to fight it off are admirable. Still, its status as an extinct beast means that any strategy must be devised carefully. The typical tricks and traps used to manage sharks would work if they could be reproduced on a grand scale, but therein lies the rub. The kind of resources this would take are those only a billionaire would have. If only Morris hadn’t made the incredibly sound decision to kill it himself without alerting any nearby governments or countries solely to protect himself legally. His lack of foresight means that, when his plan inevitably fails, the crew of the Mana One are on their own – with limited resources and a shark the size of a small island heading towards an island off of the coast of China.
Jonas and Suyin are the lead characters in The Meg. While films like this typically spend their runtime seeking to reunite exes, Lori is distinctly out of the running as a love interest here.
As Jonas seeks to redeem himself for having left his crew behind and Suyin fights to honor her father and prove herself as a capable, independent force that can stand outside his shadow, they band together. The sheer tension and chemistry between the pair make it obvious to everybody around them that they have a thing for each other. It doesn’t hurt that Jonas goes out of his way to ensure that Meiying is protected at all costs. In fact, Jonas spends much of the film trying his damnedest to keep all the major characters alive. Unlike other films, he’s moderately more successful than most. Deep Blue Sea comes to mind.
The main cast is entirely likable; even Morris manages to be an interesting guy ahead of the reveal. The impetus to save Lori, Toshi, and The Wall comes equally from a place of friendship and camaraderie as it does from a natural inclination to help one in need. The mere fact that they were trapped beneath the thermocline due to greed (on the part of Morris) and innovation and a journey for knowledge (on the part of the scientist) shows that mutual interests can work well together as long as they have mutual goals. When those goals diverge, the characters genuinely become endangered. Among the ensemble were two standouts.
Cliff Curtis provides a great counterbalance to Jason Statham and Winston Chang as Mac. While Statham provides the action heroics and Chang provides aged wisdom, Mac acts as a cross between the two.
Even if his warnings are unheeded, his efforts are not entirely wasted. There’s a reason he was brought back for the sequel.
Ruby Rose may be a supporting player here, and at times, there was a moment or two that I was genuinely worried about her character, but she doesn’t waste a moment of her time on screen.
Unlike her typical fare (a badass action star in her own right), she is not leading the fight against the shark but is by no means a passive player. I truly wish that she had come back for the sequel, too.
The Meg was an action-oriented creature feature designed as a tentpole for Jason Statham. Its inherent success warranted a sequel, which was released in 2023 – primarily because of the sheer number of films that Statham was involved in between The Meg and Meg 2: The Trench. Seriously, three Fast films came out between them, on top of Statham’s collaborations with Guy Ritchie (Wrath of Man and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre). He’s been a bit busy. On its own, The Meg is a fun and engaging film. With its sequel in tow, it becomes a two-part fare that builds off the foundation of its first outing. While Meg 2 wasn’t as financially successful, it means nothing in terms of its general entertainment. High-concept films rarely do.
Lloydd Marshall Books 