Five summers ago Jason Statham battled a very big shark. The Meg was a semi-surprise hit, joining the august company of great shark attack movies, which range from the classic Jaws to the roided-up Deep Blue Sea to the stripped-down Blake Lively pic The Shallows. It took a while — including the first years of a pandemic — for a sequel to get off the ground. Now it has, and it promises not only an even larger aquatic predator, but what looks like an even darker (maybe R-rated?) tone.
It starts not with the old gang of rescue divers but in prehistoric times. Yes, the sequel, subtitled The Trench, goes all the way back to the dawn of the dinosaurs, all so we can see a mighty T-Rex get swallowed up by a super-sized megalodon. Cut to the present day, and Statham and company are nonplussed to discover there’s an even bigger mammal, which eventually happens upon care-free vacationers who weren’t expecting to get eaten up while paddle-boating.
A lot of the crew has been swapped out, save Statham and Cliff Curtis, though maybe the biggest change is directors. The first was handled by Jon Turteltaub, he of the National Treasure films and While You Were Sleeping. This one hands the reins to Ben Wheatley, one of the more morbid English directors, who made the star-studded dystopia that was 2016’s High-Rise. As such, the kills, even in the trailer, are even bloodier and squishier than they were the first time the world was terrorized by a giant shark.
You can watch the trailer in the video above. The Meg 2: The Trench hits theaters on August 4.