The Meg...
http://youtu.be/UMi8L-yYyyMI will admit that when it comes to killer shark films Jaws will always be the benchmark so I went in more expecting to see something along the lines of Sharknado or Megashark vs Giant Octopus rather than Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss in a boat but it was still an enjoyable B movie romp.
If you haven't heard about this film the basic premise is that megalodons survived the believed extinction of their species by diving deep into the Marianas Trench where they were protected by an insulating thermal layer made up of assorted minerals. After this new area of the trench is discovered and explored, one of the prehistoric sharks is able to make it way through the clime and to the surface, where it follows it’s biological imperative to feed so Jonas Taylor (Statham) is brought in having escaped an encounter with one of these in the past while attempting to rescue the crew of a crashed submarine.
If like me you have read the novel then, as with most adaptations, while you may find it entertaining you may feel a sense of disappointment in some parts as (strange as it may seem as this is a film about a giant prehistoric shark) the science element and sense of being able to see aspects in the real world that form a large part of Alten's novels are absent.
For example, deep sea pressures. There is a scene in the film where a person is able to decend thousands of fathoms in a submersible faster then Baldymort taking a swan dive off a roof, something that just isnt possible or the two mini subs that seem to have been at the very least inspired by the A wings from Star Wars and even move like one. Now at this point I know what some of you are going to say, this is a film about a prehistoric monster shark going on the rampage in the modern world, why the Hell am I going on about realism. It was just something that struck me as I was watching it.
As much as I enjoyed it I would say that this is not a scary film by any stretch of the imagination, you may see a couple of jump scares but you won't experience that edge of your seat creeping sense of fear you had watching Jaws for the first time. You aren't going to see headlines about a widespread refusal to “go back into the water” because it comes across as so ridiculously impossible. The fact that they were able to give it a 12A rating, even with the beach scene (from the 10 commandments of Brenchly: Thou shalt not haveth a killer shark film without a scene of carnage at the beach) also tells you much about what you’re going in for- there is very limited blood and (human) gore, but given how many parents brought young children to see the film I'd say that was intentional.
Overall it was a fun couple of hours and hopefully the box office takings will be enough to convince the studio to work their way through the other books in the series.
