The Meg

"The Meg is the kind of birdbrained B movie that condemns audiences before they’ve walked in the door. Love it and you’re a moron; hate it and you’re a snob. The term ‘guilty pleasure’ is sometimes deployed as a kind of peace offering for filmmakers who never intended to make a ‘good’ movie in the first place, and for audiences who care only about being entertained. In this context fair enough: nobody goes to see a giant shark movie to reflect on the human condition."

"Where recent entries into the sharksploitation genre, The Shallows and 47 Meters Down, wrung sweats and jitters from tautly slimmed-down scenarios, The Meg, with its larger cast, budget, international reach (and, of course, prehistoric star), announces itself as an outsized juggernaut to be reckoned with."

"It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters when it could be spending it with, you know, the giant shark."

"The Meg proves only that, at least cinematically speaking, great-white movies may have finally jumped the shark."

""The Meg" doesn't seem to know how dumb it is."

"Not quite killer, but it's rare to see a 21st-century blockbuster having this much fun - right through to its sign-off - with its own premise."

"A shark movie that's too slow, too talkative and too concerned with being a 'good' film."

"The Meg ends up being just a high-budget, low-value attempt to sell you a typical tale of a tortured man tracking a monster, composed of spare parts lifted from other films you love."

"Self-awareness is all well and good in a giant shark movie, but not when it undercuts the tension."

"Of all the thrillers made about tender, juicy humans splashing away from ravenous giant sharks, The Meg is undeniably the most recent."

"The Meg, stolidly directed by Jon Turteltaub, winds up proving a fairly obvious theory about its chosen sub-genre: the more massive the shark (and the budget), the lighter the scares and the lower the stakes."

"The kind of arrogant, ostentatious laziness that only a very specific stripe of nine figure film can aspire to…"

"Shark. Weak."