- Directed by John Turteltaub
- Written by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber
- Stars Jason Statham, Bingbing Li, Rainn Wilson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udm5jUA-2bs
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s much more an action thriller than a horror movie, but it’s got some horrifying moments. It’s also one of those movies set in current times, but inexplicably has a science-fiction level of technology. Don’t nitpick the science or the violations of the laws of physics, and you’ll have a good time watching this one.
Synopsis
We begin with a deep-sea rescue mission in one of the ocean’s trenches. Jonas Taylor boards the ship; this is the worst he’s ever seen. He picks up a guy and heads for the exit; something outside the sub hits them— something big. He orders the men to get out quick, as something is trying to crush the hull. They break away just as the damaged sub explodes.
In Shanghai, China, five years later, on the Mana One Research Station out in the ocean, Mr. Morris arrives by helicopter. He meets Mr. Zhang and his daughter Suyin. It’s an undersea research lab, very futuristic. We meet Dr. Heller, Jaxx, DJ, and Mac, the station chief.
They watch as a small sub piloted by Lori Taylor goes way down deep. They believe that the bottom of the Marianas Trench may not be the bottom of the ocean; there could be a whole other world down there. The sub finds that the “bottom” is just a cloud, and they pass right through. The water is warmer underneath, and they immediately find lots of new life forms down there.
Something really big approaches the submarine. The pilot yells, “Jonas was right” as the connection is lost. They aren’t dead; they’re getting telemetry on their signals, but the sub is crippled. Can they do a rescue below 10,000 meters? The only one who’s done it was Jonas Taylor, who is now a washed-up drunk living in Thailand.
They go to Jonas, and he refuses, until they tell him who was piloting the sub: his ex-wife. Zhang thinks they encountered the same creature he did five years ago. For being a “washed-up drunk”, he still looks as absurdly handsome and athletic as ever.
Suyin takes a mini sub down next. Jonas arrives just a few minutes later, and he takes another sub down right after her. Eight-year-old Meiying, Suyin’s daughter, showed him around the sub first. They both pass through the cloud layer and enter the new world.
Meanwhile, Lori, Toshi, and The Wall are in their disabled sub, watching out the windows for it. Suyin arrives, and the thing outside hits her as well. It’s a giant squid. The squid is about to crush her sub, but the squid is eaten by a 25-meter-long super shark. She ends up heading back to the base while Jonas continues on.
Jonas gets Lori and The Wall out, but Toshi ends up sacrificing himself. He takes them back to the station, so everything’s gonna be fine now.
Right?
The big shark-thing was a megalodon, the largest shark that ever existed. They were thought to be extinct until now. Morris wants to go back down there and learn more about this new creature, but Jonas warns against it.
Their debate doesn’t really matter, because the meg has followed them home. They watch the giant eat the whale that hangs around. Soon after, boats start sending out distress calls twenty miles away. They leave the base and take a large yacht out to hunt the meg.
They find it quickly and make a plan to sedate the meg that involves Jonas in a wetsuit with a harpoon. He manages to shoot it with a tracker.
Suyin then gets in a shark cage and tries to shoot it with poison. She shoots it, but it tries to swallow her whole cage. Jonas rescues her just as the poison starts to take effect. It’s dead, so everything’s gonna be fine now.
Right?
No, because then the big megalodon attacks, eating the little megalodon and destroying the entire boat. There were two of them. Morris calls for help on his sat-phone while Heller gets eaten. They board two motorboats, but the meg pursues.
Morris’s helicopter arrives, and their shooting at the shark drives it off. They make it back to the Mana One base, but Zhang dies along the way.
Morris says the Chinese are seeing destroyers to kill the meg, and an evacuation ship will be coming tomorrow morning to clear the base.
Morris takes off in his helicopter, and we see that he has depth charges. They blow it into chunks. Little sharks all come to feed, but suddenly all the sharks swim away. Oops, they killed a whale not the big shark. Morris becomes megalodon food. Turns out Morris lied about the Chinese and the rescue ship; no one knows about their problem.
Jonas wants to kill the meg themselves, but first, they get a bigger boat.
The meg approaches the most crowded beach on Earth. Hijinks ensue. It eats a bunch of swimmers before Jonah and Suyin arrive to attack it with torpedoes. Naturally, the new ship gets wiped out, and all the characters wind up in the water. Only Jonas can save them, with a harpoon and a knife.
With the megalodon cut open, the other little sharks soon finish the job. It’s dead, so everything’s gonna be fine now.
Right?
Commentary
There was so much CGI in this that I wonder if there was even water involved in some of the shots. The futuristic technology makes this more sci-fi than a modern-day adventure, but it’s all pretty cool. It’s more than a half-hour in before we see the monster, but it’s all entertaining up to that point.
After that, it’s basically Jaws with two extra-giant prehistoric sharks. The action scenes are excellent, the CGI is so pervasive that you stop noticing after a while, the acting is fine, and everything has a really high production value. They spent a lot on this and it shows.
I don’t think it had any real surprises or jump scares, but it does what it does well. The obvious comparison is with Jaws, but it’s pretty different. Jaws was a quiet buildup of isolation and fear with great characters; this was an action-packed adventure with fairly cardboard characters. Although the shark is monstrous in size, this is much less “horror” than Jaws was, and many people don’t consider that to be horror.