Movies
Even Jason Statham is Bummed ‘The Meg’ Doesn’t Have the Blood and Gore He Signed Up For
Earlier this week, we posted a pretty crazy interview with The Meg director Jon Turteltaub, wherein he explained to us that his vision for the film was for it to be a gory, rated R shark attack flick. “I am so disappointed the film wasn’t more bloody or disgusting,” Turteltaub openly told us, adding “the number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic.”
Turteltaub actually filmed some gorier deaths, but during post-production the studio made the decision that The Meg would have to be a PG-13 film. So, well, bye bye gore.
“We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for [gory scenes],” Turteltaub explained. “We just realized there’s no way we’re keeping this PG-13 if we show this. It’s too fun a movie to not let people who don’t like blood and people who are under, say, 14 years old into the theater. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore.”
Sadly, the visual effects on those cut scenes weren’t ever finished, so we don’t expect to see them on home video. After all, it’d cost the studio millions to finish them. Sigh.
Crazy enough, star Jason Statham is now also speaking out about the original vision for The Meg being flushed down the toilet in favor of a PG-13 action-horror movie, telling Collider that the movie being released this weekend isn’t exactly the movie he signed up for.
“Script’s totally different,” Statham explained, talking about how much the movie changed after he originally came aboard. “There was so many different … sometimes you just go, “How did it happen? How did it go from this to this to this to that?” You just can’t keep a track on it. I guess if you have the control to keep it a certain way you would, but you don’t. They have a movie to make. They have so many people deciding on what action stays and what scenes stay. How the characters … In the end they want to put something at the beginning. The whole thing at the beginning where I do a rescue on a sub? That was not in the script that I read. That was all brand new stuff, good or bad. I’m just letting you know.”
He continued, “I’m just saying it was radically different. John’s interpretation of this is a fun end of summer [movie]. It’s full of humor. It’s a little bit more directed to a different taste of what my own is… I like more gory adult stuff. I’m a lot older but I can’t speak for what this film could possibly speak to a younger audience. I might have made a film that not many people wanted to see. I’m not a filmmaker. I’m sort of an actor that’s going to portray a role. I go there but I’ve learned not to get too attached with your own idea of what something could be.”
He adds, “But you go, Where’s the fucking blood? It’s like, There’s a shark.”
Speaking more positively about the film, Statham told Collider, “I admire John’s sort of great spin that he’s done. He’s put this in a place which is totally unique I think. No one was expecting The Meg to be a fun sort of humorous ride or romp or whatever. He’s put his very light-hearted way into it and not tried to make it like anything before. He’s trying to give it his own sort of stamp of tone.”
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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