Technical Review – HD

The Meg, short for Megalodon, is an extinct gargantuan shark…..or is it? The movie was shot by Tom Stern in ARRIRAW 3.4K format using Arri Alexa Mini and Arri Alexa SXT cameras.

The resulting HD image varies between excellent and mediocre with a little noise thrown in occasionally in those darker areas of the image. There are lots of brightly lit scenes from ships and their interiors to the  outdoor scenes and piercing underwater lighting.  This bright lighting plus the bright production design makes for a reasonable 1080P AVC-encoded image, with good black levels and contrast. Many of the close-up shots of the actors, control room interiors, outdoor scenes and the Meg show very good detail and sharpness. Skin tone and details were good as were the saturated colors of the control room displays and the bathing suites in the scenes at Sanya Bay.

I rarely look at video or audio bit rate information when watching a movie but after chatting to a few other viewers I did and noticed that the average bit rate was barely above a measly 19Mb/s with peaks at about 25Mb/s. For a movie of this length that would mean about 35%+ of the BD50 disc space not being used. This would also account for some of the loss of detail and less than stellar shots, particularly under water where the image seems to become soft and loose detail like a number of longer shots such as those panoramas of Sanya Bay. I fail to understand why WB would compress this movie so heavily when it would have benefitted substantially from using the entire BD50’s storage capacity. Turning a respectable image into an excellent one!

Warner seem to be deliberately trying to sabotage this HD movie with its low bit rate and now a sound track that doesn’t default to Dolby Atmos, but instead defaults to a totally wasteful DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix. Why? The ATMOS track would automatically provide Dolby TrueHD for those with no ability, like me, to decode it. There is plenty of action from the surrounds with voices, shouts, hollering and wind and water noise. The dynamic range is good with respectable bass extension from the ramming of the prehistoric shark into various hulls and objects and the occasional explosion. There isn’t too much subtlety to this movie, but effects like Meiying’s toy as it ominously rolls through the observation deck let you know that something is afoot. The score by Harry Gregson-Williams occasionally hints at the famous John Williams Jaws theme and helps push the story along. Dialogue is always clear and well prioritized across the front sound stage.

Story Overview

Several years ago Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), an expert sea diver, encounters an unknown danger while trying to evacuate a sub in the Marianna Trench, leaving behind part of his crew. After claiming to have seen a huge creature attack the sub causing the disaster, he was given a dishonorable discharge from the navy, costing him his career and marriage. Now, a submersible carrying Jonas ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNamee) diving below an icy barrier of  hydrogen sulphide into an area deeper than the Marianna Trench, becomes disabled. A phone call later Jonas is back in the hot seat and has to risk his life again confronting all his hidden fears to save sub personnel a second time! Nobody knows what disabled the sub, was it the Carcharodon Megaladon, the largest shark that ever existed and was supposed to have been extinct for more than one million years?

A modern dressed up version of every shark movie ever made! Despite the movies low bit rate video and annoying audio default, it made my family jump a few times and they all seemed to enjoy it. I too found it quite entertaining and the movie is certainly worth borrowing from your local library, as I did. Is it worth owning? Well, its certainly not demonstration material, and if I watched it one more time that would be it. So for me this is a renter not one to own.

Purchase from Amazon and Best Buy.

See my other Blu-ray reviews here.