It’s a classic setup really, a man crashes in a strange land, and must survive the elements as he works to leave. Bringing in a different spin for this familiar formula, we have Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, writers of A Quiet Place, and following up for their sophomore effort, Haunt. We follow a pilot named Mills (Adam Driver), a pilot from a planet far, far away from us. His ship is carrying some cargo, people included, all in cryo-sleep; things are moving fairly smoothly until the ship bumps into a series of small asteroids that ultimately damage the craft.
The ship veers off-course, and crashes into a nearby planet. Mills recovers, finding himself to be the only survivor until he notices a young girl, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), whose vitals are still showing. In all the chaos, it isn’t until she comes to that he realizes she doesn’t speak his language, and struggles to communicate. This pushes him to create a plan to get to the emergency vessel that broke off the main ship, and landed on top a nearby mountain. She follows suit with this plan with the understanding that her parents would be alive and waiting there for her.
But here’s the kicker. While they may not realize where they are, we realize that this planet they are on is Earth, and it’s Earth 65 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period, and the scary creatures that they encounter are in fact dinosaurs. And that’s the setup, it’s a very straightforward journey with a very basic b-movie sensibility, think Planet Of The Vampires, Beyond The Time Barrier, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, stuff that wouldn’t have necessarily aged the best, but have a simplistic charm to them that is boasted by numerous elements that work strongly to overcome a narrative that is otherwise not very demanding.
Being their first foray into some big budget filmmaking, the craft is very solid and sturdy. It helps that pretty much every department head involved here has had a pretty long and consistent career that speaks to their skills. The cinematography from Salvatore Totino, the score by Chris Bacon, the editing from Josh Schaeffer and Jane Tones, VFX supervisor Chris Harvey, and so on and so forth. It’s a film where everyone is delivering what needs to be delivered to make the film as effective as it needs to be.
For one, it’s nice to finally see a dinosaur movie that isn’t attached to the Jurassic Park franchise. While the designs are not that dissimilar, you can definitely feel the lack of pressure to be precious about them the way the Jurassic movies kind of have to be. The VFX, considering the mid-budget range the filmmakers are working with, are well done, and they have weight to them. Beck and Woods use their horror background well in creating some tense situations, and letting moments build to some effective scares and jump moments.
Also holding everything together well are the performances. Adam Driver really commits himself here, he carries himself with the swagger of a 70s, New Hollywood era leading man. I’m sure his background in the military adds a bit of authenticity to the way he handles himself in some of the more action heavy scenes. His dynamic with Greenblatt is almost instantly endearing, and I was very much rooting for them to make it through their journey safely. Greenblatt manages to do a lot with little, having to speak a made up language for most of the film, with little bits of English that she picks up from Driver’s character (or whatever you wanna call his language).
I can see why some might find 65 to be a bit underwhelming. The promise of Adam Driver shooting as a space man shooting up dinosaurs provides an image in one’s head that really no movie can ever do justice to. I feel Beck and Woods envisioned this as a 50s B-movie with a modern look and sensibility. So, yes, it’s very basic and not very complicated, and any thematic touchpoints feel superficial at best. It’s a very light film, but it’s also a very solid one that worked for me. And hey, it’s a hell of a lot better than the last dinosaur movie we got. I was on the edge of my seat for most of the climax. While I can certainly argue for a couple missed opportunities here and there, I was overall satisfied with the film, and I think Beck and Woods are proving to be a reliable source of lean, mean genre films.
65 is now out in theaters.