How Long Is Meg 2: The Trench?

Is the best horror movie a tightly-edited, quickly-paced one? Or one that draws the suspense out until you want to jump out of your seat and scream? Creature feature "Meg 2: The Trench" weighs in on the lighter side of the scale occupied by recent hits like "Evil Dead Rise," clocking in at 1 hour and 56 minutes. That means watching "Meg 2: The Trench" will take you just under two hours, give or take previews. The just-under-two-hour mark has become a sweet spot for other thrillers and horror movies that have recently broken through to become big box office hits, like "M3gan" and 2022's "Smile." 

The sequel will revisit the enormous Megalodon from the first film that shook the summer box office in 2018 and raked in half a million dollars."Meg 2: The Trench" brings back scientist Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) to head a research team that soon finds itself in over its head battling undersea creatures. But it appears the film's characters will also have human enemies to contend with, as an underwater mining company will threaten both man and beast alike. Any way you slice it, it's set to be a wild throw-down of the razor-toothed kind.

"Meg 2: The Trench" clocks in as the longest film in the "Meg" franchise thus far, but only by a few minutes. "The Meg" comes in at an hour and 53 minutes, making it just slightly shorter than "Meg 2." If you want to pre-game your "Meg 2: The Trench" showing with a showing of "The Meg," it won't take you more than four hours all in total; a perfectly scary way to spend an afternoon.

Since "Meg 2: the Trench" is such a compact film, one's left to wonder if it, like "The Meg" might have an extended version in it. After all, "The Meg" has an ultra-bloody R-rated supercut that has never been shown to audiences due to the cost of the effects needed to bring it to proper life. Viewers will likely have to wait until the movie hits digital release and practical media before finding out if "Meg 2" has as much gristle and gore waiting for them in some alternate cut. But until then they can have fun watching the film in theaters starting on August 4.