A certain kind of excitement is always felt before watching a monster movie and the trailer of THE MEG successfully created the same reminding you the thrills and chills of JAWS that still remain effective even after four decades of its release in 1975. In addition I was also eager to know about the myths related to Megalodon through the film, an extinct species of a giant shark, about which my nephew knew much more and had a lot to share.
But sadly, once again a monster movie proved to be nothing else than a mindless CGI spectacle, made like an old fashioned film revolving around a ‘giant creature’, with not much to deliver either in terms of excitement or entertainment to its keen viewers.
Directed by Jon Turteltaub, THE MEG is based on the 1997 book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten which begins well with an impressive rescue sequence introducting its lead character, but then forgets about maintaining the same kind of tension in the next 40 minutes or so. The logic goes for a toss several times in the film and it actually becomes an unexpected chaos when the makers try to put too much into the progression forgetting about the simple basic things.
For instance, it looks utterly bizzare sending team members into an unknown territory under the sea instead of a robotic camera or drone, calling a single person to fight with the invisible threat making it look like a child’s play, not informing the authorities even when the meg is close to the beach with hundreds of tourists enjoying, a millionaire arranging helicopters to fire at the giant shark, the choppers slamming into each other for no reason at all and above all the creature getting killed in style by obviously the hero, of course. Besides, I really couldn’t understand how such a huge (70 feet) creature’s fin appeared to be of the same size of a big normal shark visible above the water surface?
In other words, an American-Chinese co-production, THE MEG neither scares nor brings you on to the edge of your seat despite having a great premise and potential dealing with an extinct species returning from the unknown depths of the sea. It has a very few sequences that pull you in and frankly they are exactly the ones used in its well-made promising trailer (mostly coming in the second hour of the film). The performers do their task well as per the written content and both cinematography and background score keep trying to deliver the expected scary thrill.
But unfortunately the collective effort doesn’t come up with anything extraordinary as a tribute given to the unforgettable, cult JAWS. Having said that, I really wonder how the masters brilliantly managed to make films like JAWS and THE BIRDS, when CGI was not even there helping them out in their most important scenes. In short, you can easily skip THE MEG in the theaters and wait for its official online release soon at one of the movie portals.
Rating : 2 / 5
