The Stath vs. The Meg lacks bite.

Jaws has an awful lot to answer for. For an easily scared adolescent with an already rocky relationship with open bodies of water, me sneaking in a cheeky VHS viewing of Jaws one night while my parents weren’t looking was undoubtedly the catalyst for spending many otherwise wonderful holidays to the coast refusing to dip so much as a toe in the sea. Steven Spielberg ruined part of my childhood. There, I said it.

While clearly unsatisfied with destroying my childhood holidays, Spielberg’s prototype blockbuster made such an incredible impact upon its release that any subsequent attempts to live up to its lofty standards were almost impossible. A rather simple film at heart, it was Jaws’s impeccable execution of the basics that made any effort to follow the conventions it singlehandedly invented feel all but redundant.

This is something even the film’s sequels struggled spectacularly with as they, and numerous other pretenders, failed to recreate the Jaws magic formula of drama, horror, spectacle, and subtext with any great success; yet there were certainly ways to make things work without embarrassing yourself.

Rather than go toe-to-toe with Jaws by copying it, many shark films cleverly found their niche within the sub-genre by homing in and doubling-down on specific elements that made the original tick. Whether its focusing on the horror with something like The Shallows or Open Water, or openly embracing the silliness and clichés like Deep Blue Sea (or Sharknado, if we really want to go there); there were certainly ways to make it a success if you really worked for it.

Inevitably, some efforts work out, some don’t; and in attempting to take a chomp at every one of the above films without ever looking likely to touch any of them, The Meg finds itself cut adrift.

Five years after an aborted mission to the unexplored recesses of the Mariana Trench that cost him half a crew, his career, and any semblance of honour he once had; Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is reluctantly called back to action to help rescue a submersible that’s been attacked and left stranded in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Apparently ambushed by the same prehistoric Megalodon that’d previously tormented him, Jonas must confront his fears and risk it all for one last shot at redemption and the chance to put ‘The Meg’ down for good.

The renaissance of Jason Statham has been an oddly beautiful thing. After years of pigeonholing as a gruff action star with phenomenal athleticism and fighting technique, yet a rather limited range, Statham’s recent career resurgence has come largely via a newfound self-awareness and a more comedic tone. In a move that strangely mirrors the fortunes of the shark film itself, Statham has found success by knowing precisely who he is and what his limits are, and playing to that.

With his roles in the Fast and the Furious franchise and the Melissa McCarthy action comedy Spy, where he plays a heightened version of himself to absolute perfection, he has clearly found his groove as a self-aware action hero that’s not afraid to send up his own on-screen persona when necessary. Following this logic, The Meg appeared the perfect vehicle for the star to continue along this career path, yet it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

If the very idea of Jason Statham duking it out with a giant, prehistoric shark sounds a tad silly, that’s because it is. It’s an immensely daft premise for any film to carry, but one that’s ripe for the taking if executed correctly, with tongue firmly lodged in cheek and a knowing glint in the eye; however, no one seems to have told The Meg’s filmmakers that.

The very heart of The Meg’s problem is its indecision and its refusal to embrace the fundamental ridiculousness of its setup and protagonist. This po-faced, humourless approach leaves the film floundering without any real bite and leaves Statham back at square one as the rather bland action hero he started his career as.

In his defence, Statham gives it as good as he’s got which, to a point, injects some fun into proceedings. In fact, there are one or two moments where Jonas gets to ditch the submarine, utter a cheesy line, and go mano a mano with the megalodon which feel suitably over-the-top and showcase precisely what The Meg could (and perhaps should) have been; however, these are few and far between.

As far back as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and even The Transporter, Statham has always had a natural, grizzled charm and it’s precisely this that carries The Meg as far as it can go, yet this is a totally different prospect to witnessing a charisma machine like Dwayne Johnson pull the same trick in one of his numerous action vehicles. In comparison, there just isn’t enough all-round, scene stealing allure to Statham’s performance to adequately hide the toothless material given to him.

Flooded with cliché, predictability, and singularly awful dialogue; The Meg is a trashy B-movie stuffed inside a shiny, blockbuster wetsuit and a film that hasn’t got a clue whether to be a self-confessed guilty pleasure or full-blown summer event movie. Knowing and embracing your limits is part of the fun with any film of this ilk, yet The Meg misses the boat entirely.

With neither the smarts of Jaws, the gnawing terror of The Shallows, or even the fun nonsense of Deep Blue Sea; The Meg has plenty of paths to follow but lacks the guts to travel any one of them with conviction. Jumping between the deep sea, a research station, open water, and an uncomfortably crowded Chinese beach; the film’s plot feels so choppy and uneven it never has time or the opportunity to build up a head of steam, much less any real identity for itself.

From Li Bingbing to Cliff Curtis, the cast around Statham is certainly an intriguing prospect, however, they’re all given short shrift with some truly terrible dialogue and woefully bland characters. Only the ever-reliable Rainn Wilson appears to know precisely what film he’s in, clearly having a whale of a time as the wonderfully obnoxious billionaire financier; yet, despite the odd moment when the film attempts some form of self-awareness, it’s immediately negated by painfully unfunny jokes that land flat on their face.

There’s a lot holding The Meg back from the film it could be but, ultimately, the movie’s biggest sin is just how badly underutilised and ineffectual its big, bad shark is. Any sharksploitation film worth its salt hinges almost entirely on the deployment of its central creature, yet The Meg fails to deliver a shark worthy of the hype.

While the steady teasing of the eponymous shark in the film’s opening act is nice, once The Meg shows its hand, all bets are off, as it thoroughly overexposes the megalodon with rather underwhelming results. In a desperate attempt to demonstrate just how tough The Meg is, the film forgets the genre’s golden rule of restraint, shoving the prehistoric monster down our throats at every given opportunity.

Where the likes of Jaws would ramp up the tension to unbearable levels by holding back on their beast until absolutely necessary, The Meg chucks its CGI shark at the camera with little restraint or subtlety. The very fear inherent in large, open expanses of water is in having no idea what dangers lie around you and, while there are certainly moments when The Meg plays on these fears, not nearly enough is made of them.

Again, The Meg feels caught in two minds, stuck between all-out B-movie shlock and a more nuanced, psychological brand of horror. In failing to reach either, the film harpoons itself in the foot by becoming nothing but a bloated, sterile CGI spectacle that never follows through on its grand promises, seemingly directed and written by committee to appease its international funders and to fit into a toned down (but more profitable) rating certificate.

When all is said and done, The Meg is a movie that promises Jason Statham fighting a massive shark and, if nothing else, that’s what we get, yet it could’ve been so much more. While Statham gives it a good go, he and everyone else around him are undermined by a poorly executed, boring, po-faced script that never really decides what it wants to be. What initially felt like the continuation of the Stathnaissance (can that be a thing?), with a setup primed to take advantage of the actor’s newfound self-awareness, ends up a huge backwards step to the brand of vanilla action that dogged his early career. Despite the odd moment of welcome OTT silliness that takes advantage of just how bonkers its concept actually is, the rest of The Meg fails to fully utilise its potential, leaving us with a bloated, toothless mess that sinks without a trace.