INTERVIEW: 'THE MEG' AND REVENGE OF NATURE
Andrew Scahill was interviewed this week by VICE for an article on the upcoming sci-fi horror film The Meg, which features a 75-foot megalodon shark wreaking havoc on a beach community after being disturbed by deep-sea divers. Given his expertise in horror cinema, Dr. Scahill was contacted by VICE to provide some genre history for the revenge-of-nature film, which took over the box office in 1975 following the release of Stephen Spielberg's summer blockbuster Jaws. Recent franchises like Pacific Rim, Jurassic World, and Sharknado have returned to this formula with lucrative results, but there is a long cinematic history of man battling prehistoric baddies in films like Godzilla, King Kong, and even the 1925 silent film The Lost World.
In "Everyone Shut Up and Watch Jason Statham Battle a Big-Ass Shark in 'The Meg'," writer Miles Howard asked Dr. Scahill to comment on this horror cinema trope and what it might reveal about our contemporary attitudes towards environmental destruction, technology, masculinity, and survival.
Read the VICE article here.
