Did you catch The Meg over the summer? If you did, you’ll probably agree with me it was pretty scary. Bonechilling, even.
What’s that? It was just a buffet of over the top late summer camp with 100 million dollars of CGI? That the only scary thing about it was Jason Statham’s acting and the Megaladon sized pot holes. The bean counters at Warner Bros. definitely haven’t been scared by The Meg’s current collection of 137 million sweet, sweet domestic dollars (it will cross half a billion world wide before you finish reading this).
So what in the blue hell am I talking about when I say it was the scariest film of the summer?
Ask yourself, how did most of the of the people who punched their ticket in The Meg meet their end? Eaten alive by the titular Megalodon in question. Now getting eaten alive is a terrifying fate onto itself (having your flesh stripped off splintering bones, bite by relentless bite until your body finally surrenders to the mounting damage), except I would argue that most of the people killed by the hungry prehistoric killing machine unleashed in The Meg weren’t eaten alive.
Nope, they suffered a far worse, far more painful fate.
Video: Warner Bros. Pictures
The Megalodon was perhaps the most terrifying predators in the history of the world. Pure killing machines that could grow up to ninety feet in length and weigh up to 100 tonnes, there may not be another creature that was as much of a living nightmare as the Megalodon. Jaws was a guppy compared to these monstrosities. In the movie it bit whales in half and was bigger than many of the boats used to hunt it. Humans are to it what plankton is to blue whales.
And whales don’t chew plankton.
Most of the people consumed in The Meg weren’t actually chewed-they were swallowed. Which begs the question, which killed them first? Suffocation as the pressure from the monster’s throat and oesophagus crushed the oxygen from their lungs? Maybe they drowned in all the water, blood and whatever other bodily fluids filled the monster’s throat? Or worse, did they survive being swallowed only to be dropped into a lake of stomach acid, screaming as their bodies melted and dissolved?
Imagine a Megalodon swimming through a wormhole and travelling a few million years into the future. Imagine that same Megalodon swimming in the waters surrounding your favourite beach as a result of its little chronological adventure. Now, imagine yourself getting swallowed by said Megalodon during your next summer visit.
Would you die from a combination of the three aforementioned methods? Struggling to breathe in the few moments it would take before finding yourself in the acidic hell that would be the stomach? Would possible asphyxiation rob you of consciousness before being submerged into the most deadly stomach acid in history? Would you claw frantically at the flesh-walls on your way down, desperately trying to avoid the stomach and the acidic fate that waited with no hope of escape?
Save those questions for your next nightmare.
The point is, most of the people who died in The Meg weren’t eaten alive.
They were digested alive.
And if I ever had to choose between a trip through the digestive tract of the most fearsome sea creatures to ever roam our planet, enduring crushing suffocation before melting in history’s deadliest stomach acid, and facing a demonically possessed nun or a devil worshipping cult or a pissed off vampire?
Well bring on the forces of darkness because not only do I think I’d stand a better chance against Beelzebub, I think I’d prefer checking out that way instead of melting to death in a stomach the size of a city bus.
Image Warner Bros. Pictures
