65 (2023)

A Predictable Yet Entertaining Prehistoric Adventure

Grade: B

I walked into 65 expecting it to be about Adam Driver as an astronaut who travels back in time and crashes on Earth 65 million years ago. I was half right. Adam Driver does crash on prehistoric Earth, but he doesn’t time travel. Apparently he is part of a race of humanoid beings from another world who predate man and can somehow speak modern English. That is an admittedly clever twist, so it is something of a shame that most of the movie follows a formula we’ve seen many times before with only a few genuine surprises here and there.

In 65, Driver plays Mills, a spaceship pilot who has to take a long voyage in order to pay for treatment for his sick daughter. In doing so, he causes his daughter to resent him over time (Interstellar, anyone?). On the journey back to his planet, the ship’s sensors don’t pick up an incoming asteroid field until they are almost on top of it. This causes it to crash-of course-on prehistoric Earth, leaving Mills and a girl named Kora (Adriana Greenblatt) as the only survivors. Now they must trek across a valley to an escape vehicle that separated from the crashing ship while evading vicious predators. What’s worse, there seems to be a strange light in the sky, getting closer and closer to Earth….

The writers and directors are Scott Beck and Bryon Woods, who keep the story exciting by utilizing frightening moments and unfamiliar-looking creatures, such as a horde of carnivorous, lizard-like creatures. Jump-scares are frequently applied, and they usually work; when Mills and Kora gaze into a dark cave, a flash of lightning reveals a gigantic carnivore (which I thought was a Tyrannosaurus Rex but turned out to be something I couldn’t identify) in the waterfall behind them. And the finale doesn’t double but triples up on the excitement. First one T-Rex appears to attack the escape ship, then a second, and then the aforementioned giant predator, all while meteors streak from the sky as the infamous Asteroid draws closer. The Dinosaurs-Are-Chasing-Us formula has always been a reliable source of excitement in movies (see 1925’s The Lost World for an early example), and 65 proves that it still has legs. Giant, scary, three-toed legs.

Story-wise, unfortunately, most of the surprises in 65 are out in the first few minutes. The opening text makes it clear that the entire movie takes place in the past, and further hammers home after the opening title that the planet is prehistoric Earth. As if we couldn’t tell that from all the ads and posters. Even the story between Mills and Kora is rather predictable. We know that she will be like a surrogate daughter to him, and that she will be upset when she learns that he died about her (deceased) parents being at the escape ship. Even so, Driver and Greenblatt effectively portray their characters as brave and resourceful people who learn to look out for each other. And the expected anger that Kora feels towards Mills when she learns the truth about her parents only lasts a few minutes before they reconcile.

I heard of a flick called Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966), which apparently ends with the revelation that the titular planet is Earth. How much more interesting would 65 have been if it had followed this route, and the fact that Mills was from a different world in the same time period was a secret until the end? Or if Mills had a female companion closer to his age and they somehow gave birth to modern man (something else I thought might happen when I walked in)? The fact that there was a species identical to humanity is a much more monumental plot development than the dinosaurs, yet nothing is really done with it.

Where 65 succeeds the most with the performances, the action sequences and the main attraction of the prehistoric creatures. I could have personally done with many more dinosaurs, but the ones we do see are well-rendered and quite scary. It is sort of a call-back to old B-movies that combine space travel with dinosaurs, like King Dinosaur (1955) which tried (and failed) to pass off a giant, superimposed iguana as a T-Rex. It’s honestly about time that modern filmmakers attempted to make such an adventure for modern audiences. But when one considers the breadth of the human imagination, it could have been something even bigger. Even so, it is still an exciting and well-made film which should please Adam Driver fans and dinosaur fans alike.

Directors: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Screenplay: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Producers: Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling, Zainab Azizi, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Cast: Adam Driver (Mills), Adriana Greenblatt (Koa), Chloe Coleman (Nevine), Nika King (Alya)

Rated: PG-13 (for brief, bloody images, peril, and intense sci-fi action)