I thought the trailer for 65 made it look so generic that it must’ve been intentional. The talent attached to it was too great for it to just be a big-budget Asylum film. Adam Driver starring, Sam Raimi producing and the duo behind A Quiet Place directing. I thought it was going to be some genre-bending, subversive masterpiece.

Then I saw more marketing materials; more trailers, clips, posters. I was beginning to think that the film was probably no more complex than its first trailer suggested.

Then I saw the film. While its competently made and has some good horror, it’s by and large just as generic as the marketing makes it out to be.

A pilot called Mills (Adam Driver) crash lands on a planet that turns out to be a prehistoric earth. His only companion is the only other survivor of the crash, a girl called Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). Together they journey through a hostile environment to reach an escape shuttle, their only hope of getting off world. Dinosaurs of various sizes and appetites stand in their way.

The Characters

I don’t know what most people had deduced from 65’s first trailer but I assumed the film was about a ship that left earth, went into some wormhole or spacetime thingy and got sent back 65 million years.

I was wrong. Adam Driver and his young companion are human but they’re not from earth. They’re from an alternative human civilisation that existed millennia before us, a bit like the humans in Battlestar Galactica.

Alternate humans, or people from outer space, can be really hard to write. They need to be alien enough to convince us they’re from another culture but human enough to empathize with. There are so many examples in film and TV where the humans are so alien they’re either boring or hilarious.

65 is the only exception to this example I’ve encountered.

In the opening scene we see Mills (Driver) with his wife and daughter. If the asteroid belt of their world wasn’t visible in the sky you’d think they were on earth.

They speak like normal everyday Americans. Mills’ daughter calls him ‘Dad,’ not ‘father.’ They’re so normal and American you can’t help but question whether these people had to be from another planet. This contradiction follows you through the rest of the film. Their language, their slang, the little time we spend on their home world; these people are supposed to be from an alternative civilisation yet they may as well be futuristic humans they’re so similar to us.

If you’re somehow able to accept Mills and Koa as alternate humans, great but your troubles don’t end there.

Mills had an ill daughter back home who died while he was on a mission. As he and Koa bond through their struggle for survival, Mills vows not to let Koa die as he did his daughter.

There are a few spoilers in that premise but let me ask you this. Can you think of a more generic and predictable set-up?

It has every survival, action cliché from the grieving soldier, the young innocent he has to protect and the hostile world he has to troop through. It is pretty forgettable.

So the human characters in the big dinosaur film are boring. Surprise surprise.

So what about the dinosaurs?

The Dinosaurs

Where is it written that Jurassic Park can be the only dinosaur horror film? It’s rare that a film featuring dinosaurs that isn’t in the Jurassic series gets a budget like 65 does.

They may not be the real animals palaeontologists have studied but the dinosaurs that’ve evolved in pop culture are terrifying monsters. Ones that could flourish in a gory, suspenseful horror film.

65 isn’t that horror film but it’s the closest we have for now. It doesn’t make up for the bland characters and bizarre world-building but the way 65 presents its dinosaurs is worth commemorating.

The film quickly establishes that unlike Jurassic Park, our characters aren’t dealing with a handful of dinosaurs from a handful of species. They’re dealing with thousands and in their natural habitat. There are some quality jump scares and moments of suspense, typical if with ghosts or demons but with dinosaurs they hit different.

Of course 65 has a tyrannosaurus and it is presented with grace. The film uses the same strategy as Jurassic Park, showing the Dino bit by bit before showing it whole, but in its own style. You don’t see the T-Rex in full until after the first 40 minutes, up to that point all you’ve seen and heard are little teases, which are uniquely unsettling.

If you love dinosaurs and those descriptions sound enticing then I say go see it. If you’re not then I’d advise not checking it out until it’s on VOD. At best 65 is an hour and a half of decent Dino horror. With better writing and more freedom in terms of what it could show, 65 could’ve been the ultimate dinosaur horror film but it looks like we’re still going to have to wait a few million years for that to come.

I give 65 an entertaining 5 out of 10.