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65
(Columbia Pictures)
By Lucas Allen
After the Jurassic World trilogy, there’s so much you could do with dinosaurs, especially when putting them in our modern age. The new sci-fi/thriller “65” tries to rectify that by putting a human being (not a caveman) in the middle of prehistoric Earth taking place 65 million years ago, as the title suggests. Produced by Sam Raimi, the movie is written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the co-creators of “A Quiet Place.”
Space pilot Mills (Adam Driver) is carrying a cargo of passengers during a routine flight as a way to pay off the medical insurance for his terminally ill daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). But during the flight, his ship is hit in an asteroid field and crashes into a nearby barren planet. He survives, but most of the passengers are dead lest one, a little girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). However, she doesn’t speak English, and Mills can only muster just enough of his language to try to communicate with her.
The two of them soon set off on a perilous journey to locate a missing part of the ship that contains an escape pod to get them both off the planet. That peril includes monstrous dinosaurs ready to eat them at any given moment. But time also factors in when they must escape before asteroids descend on the planet to create an Armageddon.
The trailer would have you think this is about a man from the future stuck in prehistoric Earth, but sadly, it’s not. The movie itself wants you to invest in a universe where advanced civilizations take place in far-off galaxies while our planet was still young. Once you get over that bit of deception, it gets a little worse from there. Granted, it’s not as mind-bogglingly bad as last year’s “Moonfall,” with its dumb third act twist, but it’s pretty close.
What we get out of this film is a 90-minute snooze-fest with only small periods of excitement sprinkled throughout. The idea of fighting dinosaurs with futuristic technology may seem enticing to some, but the movie forces you to invest in two main characters, who are boring enough on their own, and more so when they’re together. It’s the same sort of concept of unexpected guardianship within a sci-fi setting,like “Aliens” or “The Last of Us,” but taken down several notches. The humor gets cringey and the drama is paper thin plus it gets more annoying when they tried to break the language barrier that feels unnecessary.
There are some dinosaur action if that’s what you’re only here for, but you still have to contend with the other layers of dumb to get through. It’s nice they were going for something realistic with their designs plus how the planet looked at that time, but it’ll make you wish for the grander blockbuster elements of the Jurassic Park movies. Naturally, comparisons to those movies are going to get brought up, but the thing is, the first film’s plot was believable enough that you can’t accept anything else that comes afterward. Then you have this film that lacks such believability that trying to invest in it is ultimately meaningless.
Although their characters aren’t all that interesting to begin with, the actors try to bring depth to them. Driver certainly has the intensity and emotion for his character plus his past military training is put to great use. Greenblatt works well with her facial expressions though whatever alien language she’s saying in the movie can be pretty distracting at times. Coleman only appears in flashbacks, but she proves to be the best part of the movie when she delivers some emotional dialogue.
Not even the intense, action-packed third act could save “65,” especially coming from Beck and Woods, who were phenomenal in creating small-scale horror with A Quiet Place. Not only it’s disappointing for everybody involved, but this movie feels like it was made for TV and not on a giant screen. Do yourself a favor and just stay home, and watch all the Jurassic Park movies instead. At least, you’ll get more entertainment out of a T-Rex chasing humans in those six movies.
THE MOVIE’S RATING: PG-13 (for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images)
THE CRITIC’S RATING: 1.5 Stars (Out of Four)
