I hate this film. Like really hate it. Firstly, I hate Jason Statham, with his husky breathy voice and boringly perfect physique. I hate the trope dot com billionaire, for oh so many reasons. I hate the Asian woman with her perfect hair and make-up and criminally neglectful parenting. I hate her child, as much as this film wants me to love her cutesiness. I hate the token black guy who, obviously, is loud and dramatic at all times. I hate Statham's ex-wife, because of course she looks like that. I hate the Asian woman's dad with his soppy monologues and general pointlessness. And I particularly hate the punky goth woman or whatever the hell she is with her stupid Gen X hairdo, starter pack tattoos and unnecessary Botox.

I hate every single second of the dialogue, more so than in any other film I've ever watched. I hate the 'romance' between Statham and Asian woman. I hate the complete triviality of violent death. I hate the lack of wind at sea. I hate the lack of hypothermia suffered by the cast. I hate the Chinese people at the beach. I even hate Pippin, purely because these cretinous writers wanted me to love him. But most of all, I hate the fact that I live on the same planet as people who actually enjoy this movie. I hate them.

My main reasons for seeing 'The Meg' were that there are classic shark films out there (there is an obvious example that won't be named by means of fairness in the review but has been mentioned elsewhere) and that it was part of my many quests to see as many 2018 films as possible. It did look from the cover that it would be some kind of guilty pleasure fun, which was my ideal kind of film for the day.

Apparently 'The Meg' had a lot of studio interference, meaning that what was initially intended (and from the sounds of it what was initially intended would have made it a much better film) was not seen in the film, and it shows in the final product. Wanted some guilty pleasure film, a kind of turn-the-brain-off-at-the-door sort of film. Instead, 'The Meg' turned out to be poorly written and mostly devoid of tension and fun, one where one is rooting for the shark than any of the human characters. Is it better than any of the shark-creature films from SyFy and The Asylum? Oh yes, so much better, now those are mostly abominations. That doesn't stop 'The Meg' from being potential unfulfilled.

There are positives. 'The Meg' does start off reasonably well with a sense of unsettlement and the climactic scene is pretty entertaining. The best character, kid you not, is the shark which had personality and one that was not too scary or goofy.

It's pretty decent visually, nicely shot in particular, the music fits well and Jason Statham brings charisma to his role and is believable in that aspect.

On the other hand, the rest of the acting is a mess. Worst of all is a dreadful Bingbing Li, with a character that bores and annoys and approaching the character in a way that's completely wrong and out of kilter with everything else. None of the characters are well written, too bland to be interesting and too annoying with dumb decision making to be likeable. A few of them are completely unnecessary. Development is zero.

Special effects are uneven, some times they are pretty good and at other times they look so artificial and like they were made in haste. The action scenes with the shark are too few and they are generally devoid of tension, scares and suspense, ruined by unintentional humour, tameness, stupid goofiness and lack of sense, even when taking it for what it is meant to be. The story is as shallow and predictable as can be, with the pace dulling significantly outside of the shark action and indicative of padding out the already overlong by 15-20 minute running time.

Faring worst is the script, which is even more atrocious than Bingbing Li's acting, bad enough to warrant a paragraph of its own. Far too much talk, very clumsy attempts at humour (unintentional and the cringe-worthy intentional), a good deal of waffle some of which adds nothing, a lot of ridiculousness and implausibility, excessive sentimentality, muddled and clunky scientific exposition and some of it perplexes in terms of clarity too.

In summary, has good things but ruined primarily by the script. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) leads an underwater rescue to a submarine. They are attacked by an unknown creature and he's forced to abandon two of his own men. He gets blamed by Dr. Heller from his team and withdraws into drinking in Thailand. Five years later, he is recruited to lead another underwater rescue. Billionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson) has funded a deep water research to go beyond the deepest depths. Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing) and her father lead the mission off the coast of China. Their submersible with three crew members are trapped after a creature attack.

The first half is an underwater adventure. It's nothing great but at least, it's watchable. The second half has the movie and the shark coming to the surface. It rambles around and it stumbles to its cheesy finish. It would have been vastly better to make the whole movie about the deep water rescue mission and end the movie with the hot water jet escape. That's not to say the first half is any great filmmaking. The station is far too glossy and there are too many questionable issues. When Morris complained about the elevator, I'd rather have that type of dirty grime. It gives the movie inherent tension as if the station is ready to fall apart. All the hi-tech gloss works against that idea. Once the sharks get to the surface, their size is hard to gauge. There is one scene where the shark bites the station which shows the size but it's all lost when there is only the fin. This is half an ok movie and half a bad B-movie. It adds up to a rather flawed blockbuster.