65 - Review Thread

Given the multi-million dollar blockbuster status that the Jurassic Park movies have to this day, it’s perhaps a bit surprising that Hollywood hasn’t done more to try to rip them off. After all “dinosaurs” aren’t an exclusive IP or something, you’d think there would be more movies with prehistoric creatures trying to capitalize on that success. The film 65 seems to be an exception to that, and is perhaps a good example of why we don’t see more of these. The film is set 65 million years ago (hence the title) and follows a character played by Adam Driver, who looks like a regular human but who is actually an alien from a distant planet who accidentally crash lands on Earth and encounters the dinosaurs shortly before they were obliterated by the asteroid strike. The film is basically a survival narrative as he tries to cross a span of land along with a child who also survived the crash in order to escape on a pod that landed across a valley from where they are. This will require them to fight dinosaurs. I was a little surprised to see Adam Driver starring in this thing as he generally strikes me as being a rather discerning actor in what roles he chooses and, well, this thing is kind of a trashy assignment. Actually it might have benefited from being a bit more knowingly trashy as it plays like a pretty straight survival flick rather than as the dumb dinosaur movie that it was kind of advertised as. The movie it actually reminded me of was the mostly forgotten M. Night Shyamalan helmed Will Smith vehicle After Earth which was a similarly dull journey across a hostile planet. Unlike that film this at least doesn’t have bizarre performances and has cooler enemies in the form of dinosaurs. There are a couple decent-ish scenes and it’s mostly professionally helmed but for the most part it’s pretty lame.