I love shark movies, and I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time.  The mere idea of carcharodon megalodon is exciting, if terrifying, to me, and I’m amazed that no major movie until now has ever dared to exploit it (I do not count those appalling Asylum-produced travesties for the Syfy channel).  Steve Alten’s book was published twenty years ago, so this movie has been a long time coming.  And, of course, the end result is largely disappointing.

Jon Turtletaub’s film shows some promise, but it changes so many details of Alten’s book as to be unrecognizable.  A secret channel in the deepest of oceanic deeps is revealed to be home to spectacular marine life, including the largest apex predator the world has ever known.  And in exploring these deeps, people lead the thing out into the big wide world.  As the seventy-foot shark begins its feeding frenzy, the crew that inadvertently let it loose tries to capture it, then kill it.  But can they prevent the prehistoric predator from rewriting history?

To its credit the movie has a sense of humor about itself, and some of its frightening moments are fairly scary (but not enough to give me nightmares the way Jaws did).  The story generally makes sense, even as it abandons its family-centered origin story.  But it rarely takes itself seriously enough to have a real impact.  Jason Statham is stalwart and brave as Jonas Taylor, and Bingbing Li is excellent as his female counterpart, Suyin.  It is nice to see their relationship develop and mature, even as the giant shark tries to devour them.  But Rainn Wilson as the billionaire funding the project is just as silly as one would expect.

One aspect essentially ruins this for me, repeatedly.  Although no human being in history has ever seen anything as large, magnificent or terrifying as a seventy-foot megalodon shark, once the thing surfaces, it is treated as just another shark.  The scientists that discover it are awed, but not frightened enough to get into the water with it.  It swims into a crowded beach area with a dorsal fin the size of a sailboat with little fanfare.  Sure, people panic because someone yells “Shark!” but there is not one single exclamation like “Look at the size of that monster!” or “What the hell is that?” or anyone screaming as if they have just seen the devil himself.  Ultimately, this is just another shark in just another shark movie, and that’s too bad.  It had the promise of so much more, and it settles for so much less.  ☆ ☆.  4 September 2018.