“The Meg 2: The Trench” loses the benefit of being an off-the-wall big-budget B-movie surprise, and it loses most of the laughs served up by the monster movie that took the summer of 2018 by surprise.

It’s still built around a wholly-committed Jason Statham, who never for one second lets on that he’s not all-in on a thriller about digital prehistoric, gigantic megadolon sharks.

Watch the set of his jaw in the close-ups, the commitment to some pretty impressive Jet-ski stunts and the fury of his fights with assorted villains — chiefly “Montes,” played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta. All this talk about Tom Cruise and his “do my own stunts” work ethic. Has he ever faced down a 70 foot long shark?

The effects are impressive, and not limited to “Megs” this time around.

That hope, expressed aloud in one of the repetitive scenes mixed in with a few novel settings — a deep DEEP “trench” sea-floor station among them — “I hope it goes better than the first time” is kind of futile in this polished but listless sequel.

The survivors of the first misadventure remember their dead and wear their scars. Jonas Taylor (Statham) is now a widowed eco-warrior, busting heads on freighters dumping radioactive waste into the Philippine Sea. Now motherless daughter Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai) is 14, and taking stupid risks.

She’s got an uncle, her mother’s brother (Jing Wu) given to reckless efforts to test their new exo-skeleton suits as he “trains” and tames the Meg he’s raised from a “pup.”

And grumpy Mac (Cliff Curtis) and grumpier DJ (Page Kennedy) are still doing their part in this multi-national deep sea research business.

But there isn’t much fun in their esprit de corps as they face new threats — human and Cretaceous Period — way down below, and on the isles and beaches on the surface.

Good effects, good Statham, slapdash script, nonsensical science, poor character motivation and just a couple of decent laughs accompany this sequel into theaters. A favorite? Uncle Jiuming tests out his “training” on the “pet” shark they keep in a pen. It comes for him, and everybody averts her or his eyes.

“Did she get’im?” DJ wants to know when they look back through the viewing window?

Rating: PG-13 for action/violence, some bloody images, language and brief suggestive material

Cast: Jason Statham, Jing Wu, Skylar Samuels, Sienna Guillory, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sergio Peris-Mencheta and Cliff Curtis.

Credits: Ben Wheatley, scripted by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:56