The Meg mini review and impressions

     As a monster movie fan I have a particular fascination with shark movies. The fact that of all the "killer animal" movies that exist, sharks get their own sub-genre is rather cool. They are absolutely some of the most terrifying and interesting creatures in the world so it is easy to understand why that is. With so many shark movies it is a shame that most of them are...less than good. Jaws set a bar for quality that may not ever be truly met. Many recent filmmakers decided to use this as an excuse to make bad movies for the sake of making bad movies (though that is a topic for another  day) After monster movies were considered a joke for so many years it filled me with so much joy to see two shark movies in recent years rise up as, not just good shark/monster movies, but just good movies. The first was The Shallows(2016) and the other was this years surprise hit, The Meg.
     I will say outright that I was not expecting anything from this movie. I know that, by nature, monster movies will always have this level of camp that is just so hard to overcome. worst part is, the bigger the creature, the bigger the hurdle to overcome. So a giant shark was naturally cheesy that all I wanted out of this movie was some good campy fun. The movie caught me off-guard right away with how serious it takes itself and how serious and rational the characters are in just about every situation. Before I get ahead of myself, I should talk about the basic plot. Without getting into too many spoilers, a new exploration and research station was built to map and catalogue an uncharted region of the ocean. The initial tracking sub goes down and everything is going as well as it could be. Theories were right and a whole new ecosystem hiding in the depths is discovered. Something goes wrong when something is attracted to the light of the sub and attacks it causing the it to wreck. With few places to go, the crew looks to a former crew-mate to help retrieve the sub and save the crew.
     Upon rescuing the crew it is discovered that megalodon has survived in this sealed biome and is aggressively drawn to the light sources around that depth. The crew escapes but during the escape a thermal vent opens up part of the "ceiling" separating the warm water with the megalodon and the normal cold water at the depths (it also probably didn't help that the explorers showed the shark that the ceiling was not in fact solid). The shark is then free and the rest of the movie is a chase to stop the shark before it causes any real trouble. I have said it before, but simple focused plots are the best and this movie hardly ever loses focus.
     While the plot grabbed me well enough, what really surprised me was the characters. With the exception of one questionable action by Morris towards the end, The characters acted fairly rationally given the weird circumstances and nature of the movie. This is one of those few movies I can say I didn't truly hate any of the human characters. In a sci-fi shark movie, that is quite an accomplishment, at least to me. For honestly dumb reason's my favorite character is the Wall. I know how that sounds if you haven't seen the movie but, trust me it's a person and not architecture. Heck even the child actor was fine. Her performance wasn't spectacular but the movie had the foresight to take her out of shots before she may have started to become annoying. On the whole it felt like not no character was wasted.
     I suppose the last thing to address is the shark itself. Of course, the shark is entirely CG so if you are against CG animation don't expect anything else. That being said, the CG is really well done. Design was easy, it's a shark. The creator's were able to focus on making that shark look as decent as possible. The behavior of the beast is extraordinarily believable and well thought out. The Megalodon is drawn to vibrations and light sources to hunt. Considering most of it's life was spent hunting fish and squid that use bio-luminescence it makes total sense for it to have the same if not greater light sensitivity to some other sharks.

     Despite how much praise I give this movie, I can say that it is not perfect. Most of the elements that I described while good, are not exceptional. Also, as I stated early on, there is this general cheesiness and campy atmosphere that comes with these movies that is very hard to escape. The beach scene in this movie does kind of derail it back to Syfy original movie territory. Even with that, the movie moves at a brisk pace, has decent characters and decent effects. I honestly recommend this movie to just about everyone. I can't say this is movie of the year, but has definitely earned some recognition. Go see The Meg and have yourself a good time.