This being a shark-related movie, there's one thing that needs to be said - There is only one thing that's even close to a 'Jaws' reference. It's a good thing since 'Jaws' references are overused in this kind of movie, expeccially in 'Tentacles' where they basically remade 'Jaws'

Since this is a review of 'Megalodon', I'm only going to mention other shark-related movies once, right now: 'Jaws' inspired many other similar movies, either featuring sharks or some other marine creature, and 'Jaws'-style movies used to be cookie-cutter for this kind of movie. However ,it's clear from this movie, 'Shark Hunter' and the first two 'Shark Attack' movies, among others, that 'Jaws' is no longer the cookie cutter for sea monster movies, and that Deep Blue Sea has taken its place. For those wondering why, it's because the more recent sea creature movies feature either people starded in some kind of underwater building, genetically mutated sharks, or both. That said, aside from the 'people stranded underwater', this had very little relation to 'Deep Blue Sea'.

Onto the movie itself:

The plot involves the cast being in an oil rig. They have a helicopter and two types of submarines. I think I missed the reason why, but although the rig has a maximum of twenty-two people working on it at any time, there's significantly less at the current time. They are drilling through the ocean floor in hopes of finding more resources.

However, when they break through it, they find that its full of water populated by ancient sea creatures, such as Dunkleostreus. When I read the back of the DVD cover I knew there would be other ancient creatures besides the Megalodon and I'm happy that they gave these creatures some screentime, only if it was mainly just the Dunkleostreus.

The shark itself doesn't show up until quite late. Okay, I said I wouldn't mention other shark-related movies, but in the off-chance anyone actually wants to know - the Megalodon in this movie, while CGI, doesn't look as bad as the one in 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon', and they show it a lot more clearly than the one in 'Shark Hunter', so I guess that makes it the best Megalodon in a movie (since only three movies featured them to begin with).

As for the characters... I guess they're really uneven, if anything. We don't see much of half of them, but the others are well-developed. I honestly don't know if I would have preferred this, or a more even mix of character traits. I guess some good characters and some poor ones are better than an entire cast of mediocre characters, but since it takes the Megalodon so long to show up, the characters without well-defined personnalities or character traits get a lot of screen time.

By comparing the events of the movie to the cast list, I've noticed that a couple of characters dissappeared partway through the movie, but what the heck, nothing's perfect, and as you may have guessed from my rating and first comment, I don't have high standards for shark movies in general. Anyway, maybe the novel explains what happened to them. I haven't read it.

I was thinking the cast would use the helicopter to escape, but the helicopter got trashed. I'm happy about this because there's way too many movies where the heroes escape by helicopter.

To be honest the demise for the shark was something I didn't see coming... in fact not only did my first theory on how the shark would meet its end prove false, the second did as well... and the shark died before I could come up with a third theory on how it would meet its end. The 'twist ending' (well, we all know there seems to be some kind of movie law making twist endings madatory) was possibly the clearest 'through the water' shot I've seen in a movie.

And on the subject of that, one of the reviewers on Amazon (the american site) has caslled the ending 'stupid and an obvious set up for Megalodon two' or something like that. I wouldn't even have mentioed this fact were it not for the following two reasons:-

1: Almost everything even close to a horror movie has a twist ending

2: The idea that they broke into an unknown part of the ocean containing thousands of prehistoric creatures, but only one Megalodon, is ludicrous

Overall... yes, this movie had some minor flaws, but finding a perfect movie is near-impossible and besides, my expectations for shark movies are lower than dirt.

So I'd give this movie 6 out of 10, which, incidentally, is the highest rating I've given a shark movie.