65: A Silly, Family-Friendly Sci-Fi Actioner With A Bit Of Bite
After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth... 65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive.
Listen, we’re not going to front here, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 65 is not a great movie — or as good as a movie about Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs with laser guns ought to be — but compared to the limp and ludicrous dino-themed action thrillers penned by Colin Trevorrow, it delivers adequate enough entertainment to whet the appetite of anyone looking for some dumb dino fun. For the most part, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and despite its many flaws, it manages to mine enough tension and suspense from its premise to keep audiences mostly engaged for its lean 93-minute runtime. It sometimes feels as though it’s going through the motions, but it’s really only when it tries to be more than a white-knuckle survivalist thriller that it bites off more than it can fully chew or develop.
Its concept, which finds a pilot from a technologically advanced planet crash landing on a prehistoric Earth right as the asteroid is ushering in mass extinction, is novel and intriguing, with roots in great films like Planet Of The Apes, Jurassic Park, and A Quiet Place, but the course 65 charts across its harsh primordial terrain is not nearly as inspired or interesting. Instead of embracing the silliness of its premise and leaning into camp, Beck and Woods opt for a more serious approach, which plays into its gritty survivalist nature but also shuts the door on some potential fun. They also bludgeon you over the head with cornball family themes that reach for emotions that aren’t very resonate or earned. The film attempts to balance the sap with some darkness and brutality, and while the two never fully cohere or find harmony, they do create a somewhat interesting dynamic.
The film replaces the Spielbergian awe of the Jurassic period with a more realistic feeling of horror and dread, and it does a pretty good job of creating a dog-eat-dog world where literally everything is trying to kill you. The heartless environment is contrasted with the humanity shared between Driver’s Mills and his fellow stranded shipmate, Koa (played by Ariana Greenblatt), which has a certain potency despite ringing hollow. In one of the film’s best scenes, where Koa ventures out of her way to save a cute young carnivore from a tar pit who is instantly devoured by a pack of stronger predators, Beck and Woods illustrate this contrast beautifully. The only humanity that Mills and Koa will find on this prehistoric Earth is within each other, everything is an indifferent death trap.
Flimsy as it may be, the bond between Mills and Koa is the heart of the film, and while it might have fared better without the added family angle (Mills has a sick daughter and Koa’s parents are killed on impact when the ship crashes), it gives the film some needed levity and respite from the largely repetitious trek. Beck and Woods place a language barrier between them, which is a potentially interesting narrative device, but their execution is limp and often yields head-scratching results; it might have been better to scrap that idea entirely or go full-on no communication, but, hey, it’s a choice. Driver manages to bring some dimension and gravity to his character that wasn’t really there on paper, and Greenblatt does a nice job of hitting the key emotions required, even if they’re not built to land. Some of the CGI is a bit wonky, but there’s some nice futurist tech peppered throughout and some cool creature designs on display though, particularly the Fasolasuchus which is a cinema first.
65 is certainly no Jurassic Park, but it’s much better than any of the Jurassic World films (which isn’t saying much), and it offers enough thrills and reptilian carnage to meet expectations. Overall, it’s enjoyably mediocre, and it plays very similar to thrillers like Crawl (2019) or Underwater (2020), or The Tomorrow War (2021). It’s certainly not going to knock your socks off or form a lasting memory, but we would gladly follow Adam Driver anywhere and felt like we got what we paid for.
Recommendation: If you’re looking for to fill a Jurassic Park-sized hole in your life, 65 won’t quite fill the void, but it will satisfy your thirst much better than the Jurassic World films.
Roaring for more?! Check out the links below:
Adam Driver movies
Crawl review
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom review
Life (2017) review
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!