I tend to like it when a movie knows exactly what it is. That certainly seemed to be the case for “Meg 2: The Trench”, a delightfully goofy looking sequel to 2018’s delightfully goofy “The Meg”. While based on author Steve Alten’s series of deep sea horror novels, the first film embraced the classic creature-feature formula while maintaining a self-awareness that made the unashamedly silly adventure a lot of fun. The sequel…not so much.

“Meg 2” is directed by Ben Wheatley whose last film (2021’s terrific “In the Earth”) was a creepy and unsettling low-budget indie. In a rather sharp contrast, “Meg 2” comes with a considerably larger budget and a big studio backing. But here’s the thing – “Meg 2” is a movie that didn’t have to do much to win me over. All I wanted was the proudly preposterous romp from the gonzo trailers and the equally amusing posters. In a nutshell, I just wanted what they advertised.

Unfortunately “Meg 2” turns out to be a baffling misfire. It’s a movie that seems to have the biggest and easiest target to hit, yet it misses it on every side and from every angle. The vast majority of its issues comes from the screenplay – quite easily one of the worst of the year so far. Not only is the story itself littered with inexplicably bad choices, but characters are handcuffed to some of the most excruciating dialogue you’ll hear.

I truly wish that I was just spouting hyperbole. But the screenwriting trio of Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris never seem to have a firm grasp of what kind of movie they’re making. For example, it gets off to an incredibly slow start with some lengthy table-setting that wouldn’t be so bad if it were building up to something good. Instead it launches the movie into a direction completely unfitting for something called “Meg 2”. Basically the megs (and yes that’s plural) get back-burnered for over an hour, replaced by some potentially interesting ideas that I’m sure looked better on paper than they do on screen.

One of the big draws for me was Jason Statham returning as Jonas Taylor, a deep sea search and rescue diver who in the first film joined up with a team of oceanographers, engineers, and researchers to kill a prehistoric man-eating shark known as a megalodon (a meg for short). When we meet him here he’s described as an “eco-warrior” and a “green James Bond”. He leads an organization that does ocean research and exposes those who harm the ecosystem. Noble work for sure, despite the corny titles.

The ramshackled story begins in earnest after Jonas and his team set out in two submersibles for a research mission some 25,000 feet below the ocean’s surface in the Pacific’s Mariana Trench. While exploring an unmarked sector where megs are believed to live, the team discovers a mysterious underwater station ran by a rogue mining operation. Intent on keeping their nefarious environmentally unfriendly activities secret, the ridiculously shallow corporate money-grubbers order their paper-thin henchman (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) to take out Jonas and his expedition.

What follows is a lengthy sequence where Jonas and his crew attempt to breach the station and find their way back to the surface, all while megs swim around in the background, only occasionally getting the chance to pose a threat. There’s actually a cool idea for an underwater thriller somewhere in this overly long stretch. But it’s hard to find among the countless clichés and (again) that glaringly bad dialogue which saturates the entire film.

The movie plods along before finally reaching Fun Island, a sun-soaked tropical getaway for the rich and privileged that provides ample human fodder for our much neglected computer-generated behemoths to (finally) feed on. And by that time I was rooting for the megs. With the exception of Statham’s Jonas and maybe his painfully bland yet reasonably charming 14-year-old daughter Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai), the human characters aren’t easy to get behind.

I hate it for the cast – the woefully misused Cliff Curtis, an astonishingly bad Page Kennedy, a cringe-inducing Wu Jing, just to name a few. These are real talents and it’s hard to put the blame on them. In reality Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington, and Meryl Streep couldn’t do anything with this material. And no cast member is able to escape without uttering at least a few mind-numbing lines.

Like I said, I like it when a movie knows exactly what it is. I wish “Meg 2” was that kind of movie. Instead it ends up being a surprisingly bizarre botch that doesn’t work as a thriller, a comedy, horror, an action flick, a creature feature, or even late-night B-movie schlock. It just exists in this almost undefinable state of confusion. I’m still not sure it knows what it wants to be. But it certainly missed out on what it could have been. “Meg 2: The Trench” is in theaters now.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS