The Meg | 2018 | PG-13 | - 1.6.4

Five years after a deadly attack by a Megalodon shark that was thought to be extinct, a group of scientists and their leader (Jason Statham) attempt to stop the gigantic fish but tragedy and victory are both parts of the outcome. Also with Bingbing Li, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao and Cliff Curtis. Directed by Jon Turteltaub. Several lines of dialogue are in two Chinese dialects and a few words of Japanese are spoken with English subtitles. [1:53]

SEX/NUDITY 1 - A man is shirtless in a steamy shower and later wears a towel low around his waist to exposing his chest and abdomen and when a woman enters she looks away and says, "You're naked" and leaves; however, she stops outside the door to look back through a window as he walks off-screen. A few scenes include many women wearing bikinis and one-piece swimsuits that bare their legs, some abdomens and cleavage. A few scenes show men and women in body-hugging wetsuits. A few men wear swim trunks at a beach (we see their chest, abdomen and back).
► A young girl tells a man that her mother likes him; he smiles. A man and a woman wave at each other across a boat and smile, flirting. A male scientist talks about the insertion of a rescue ship and laughs; a woman asks, "Is everything sexual with you?" and he answers, "Sex, food, money, power."

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - Several scenes feature close-ups of the open mouth of a 70-to-90-foot-long Megalodon with hundreds of large sharp teeth in several rows: The Megalodon with its mouth open charges toward the audience twice, displaying a large tongue and we can see several large gills moving. The Megalodon charges a glass undersea walkway where a young girl plays; it smashes into the glass, she screams in close-up and a man and a woman run to her and they all see a whale bumping the glass until a huge shark bites and eats it, spreading blood in the water as a child says, "There's a monster and it's watching us," and the man says, "We have to find it and kill it."
► A man splashes in the water, is charged by a large shark and eaten, while a woman beside him escapes but cries in close-up. Hundreds of people (including children) swim at a beach and swim fast while screaming "Shark" when they see a large shark fin; people on the beach run, the shark grabs the anchors of three floating platforms, surfaces and snaps up and swallows several people, a jet ski capsizes and a large plastic bubble with a man inside bursts (the man is thrown out) and we see some small streams of blood in the water (a small dog in the water looks as if it is swallowed, but we see it later, still swimming).
► Scientists on a boat come across the small pieces of a wrecked larger boat mingled with dead sharks with fins cut off showing bloody stumps. A winch pulls up something we see only briefly, but it looks almost like a human buttock and leg, with a little blood (it could be part of a dead shark); a woman shudders and turns away. We see many sharks savagely eating a large shark and blood and pieces of bloody flesh spreads in the water.
► Inside a darkened submarine we see a bright flash, hear a loud pop as metal creaks and groans and a large unseen object hits the sub three times, tossing men and women into bulkheads (we see a dead man lying in a corner with no blood evident and another dead man has a large bloody gash on one thigh where the pants leg is cut away); a rescue team must leave before a giant creature attacks again, a large hull breach lets water and debris pour in, men in the belly of the sub shout over the intercom that it is flooding and a recording of this transmission is played later; we see the damaged ship explode underwater with a loud boom and a blossoming cloud of smoke and some flames.
► A man gives the crew of a helicopter depth charges, tells them to blow up a large shark and he watches from a boat as a the large shark bites a large bloody chunk from the whale and we see bloody flesh and blood flow; the man leans against the whale and the shark snaps its mouth over him (we hear that he died). A bloody shark is tied onto the deck of a boat and a man puts his head into its mouth, screams, and falls into the water where he laughs until a much larger shark swallows him. A large shark capsizes a boat and a man shouts for help as debris fills the water and a man floats unconscious, face down; other people put him into a life boat and we hear but do not see that his leg is wounded, and he awakens and then he dies. A giant shark chases two life boats as a helicopter shoots a spear, grenades, and machine guns at a large shark without killing it; we hear muffled booms and see water spouts and bits of fish flesh rise and hit men in the helicopter. A man fires explosives from a sub, he tips the craft and uses one wing to cut open the belly of a shark as blood spreads into the water; as the shark snaps onto the glass bubble of the sub, it smashes it several times causing glass to break and the man shouts, escapes, and shoots a poisoned spear into the animal's eye (we see it sink and shudder). Men in a boat dump bloody fish parts into the water to attract a shark and blood spreads as a woman descends into the ocean in a shark cage where she is struck by a giant shark twice; her air hose leaks and she collapses as the shark swallows her cage half-way, the cable on the cage tips the boat, the winch arm knocks a man into the water and breaks away to knock another man and other men throw a bag of bloody fish meat into the water, the shark grabs it, and a diver jumps in and pulls the woman out of the cage, shoots a poisoned spear into the animal's eye and its jaws snap as it falls through the water, shuddering.
► At the bottom of the Mariana Trench we see many schools of fish and some rectangular transparent creatures with many thin tendrils; a submarine sends a rover to the ocean floor and something large hits the sub causing a woman to scream, something hits the sub again and a woman is thrown over a console, coming up with a long thin metal rod stabbed into her stomach (we see a little blood and we later see a man finishing a bandage on the wound without blood shown). A large shark hits a sub throwing people against walls and killing power; the people become cold and the shark charges the sub and we hear that the sub is leaking oxygen.
► A man docks a small sub with a larger sub and cuts a docking hatch closure away to release trapped men and one woman (the lower half of her shirt is covered in blood); one crewman slams the hatch shut and a close-up shows him screaming as he blows up the submarine (we see the submarine explode end-to-end with smoke and flames and a loud bang under the water). A large shark fin surfaces and a man swims toward it with a spear gun loaded with a tracker on a spear point; he fires it into the fin successfully, but the giant shark chases him, snapping hundreds of teeth at him three times and a cable pulls the diver onto a ship just in time before the final snap.
► A woman pilots a one-person sub to rescue a larger sub of people and a man takes another sub and pursues her, but he looks out the glass bottom and seems a little shaky, his nose bleeds (we see some blood on his fingers), several giant octopus legs attach suckers to the woman's sub and crush it setting off a pressure alarm and then release and move away as a cloud of ink exudes into the water; we then see a giant shark with huge teeth that likely ate the octopus and it moves away and then moves back to swim over the woman. A man and a woman pilot small subs and the woman fires a torpedo-like explosive at a giant shark that snaps at the other sub; we see fire and smoke under water and hear a muffled boom.
► A woman is not breathing and receives CPR; we see a close-up of her face as she awakens in a ship's bunk, unharmed and a doctor says, "You were dead a minute ago." A woman lies under a covering in a hospital bed, unconscious and we hear that a wound missed her liver (we later see her recovered). A woman builds a memorial altar to her dead father on a shelf. A man argues with his doctor, who accuses him of hallucinations and pressure induced psychosis; later the doctor apologizes. A man and a woman argue, two men argue twice, and two other men argue once. A young girl asks a man if her mother will die, and he answers no. A man says that humans always discover and then destroy. Another man says that man against nature is a slaughter. A woman shouts at a man that he always leaves people behind to die. We hear that a woman blew up an illegal whaling ship with a homemade torpedo.

LANGUAGE 4 - 1 not fully enunciated F-word derivative that is cut off as an elevator door closes, 3 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms, 15 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, crazy guy, idiot, pistol, ugly, day camp, racist), exclamations (oh man, oh my goodness, jeez, oh mai yai), 1 religious profanity (GD), 6 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Jesus). | profanity glossary |

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman in a café brings a man a beer bottle and removes an empty one, a man opens three bottles of beer for friends (no one drinks), a man on a boat tells another man that he drinks too much and the second man laughs and holds a beer bottle but does not drink from it, and several empty rocks glasses are seen on a table with no alcohol present.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Danger, undersea predators, death, loss, grief, survivor's guilt, blame, sacrifice, evolution, succeeding in a mission, scientific discovery, poaching, illegal fishing, helping others, friendship, loyalty, money and power.

MESSAGE - Prehistoric beasts may still be around and are dangerous to humans.