Summary
With the simple yet effective elevator pitch of Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs, how did65turn out so awful? It had one of the most exciting trailers of the year, with Kylo Ren crash-landing on a prehistoric Earth and contending with bloodthirsty dinosaurs.65was hyped up to beEvent HorizonmeetsJurassic Park. All it had to do to succeed as a movie was to succeed as solid pulp entertainment. At the very least, it should’ve played like a mediocre episode ofBlack Mirror. But65ended up being one of 2023’s worst movies. It set a low bar and still managed to underwhelm. How did a movie that seemingly had everything going for it end up being so terrible? How did a movie with such a juicy high-concept premise turn out so dull and boring?
Set 65 million years ago,65opens on the planet Somaris, a distant foreign world that seems to be almost identical to Earth. Its inhabitants look exactly like human beings and speak English. The only difference from Earth is that the mountains curl at the top. That should arrive as an early indication of the level of imagination that went into this movie. Driver plays Mills, a pilot whose wife convinces him to embark on a two-year space expedition that will pay for their daughter’s life-saving medical treatment. Along the way, the ship hits the debris of a large asteroid andcrash-lands on a dinosaur-infested Earth. Mills and the only other survivor of the crash, a young girl named Koa, try to make it to their escape shuttle before a giant asteroid – the same one that knocked them towards Earth in the first place – strikes Earth and makes all the dinosaurs extinct.
Koa is played by Ariana Greenblatt, one of the breakout stars of 2023. Greenblatt can also be seen playing Sasha, the snarky teen with a heart of gold, inBarbieand young Ahsoka Tano inthe Clone Wars flashback sequences inAhsoka. Greenblatt, like Driver, deserves much stronger material than this. The first thing that lets65down is its very thinly drawn character development. By the time Mills has crashed on Earth and is contemplating suicide, the movie has given the audience no reason to care about him. The opening scene showed him to be a loving husband and father, but so are most action movie protagonists – there’s nothing that sets this one apart. Throughout the movie, Mills is tormented by visions of his daughter, but this is used as a shorthand for character development; it has no substance.
Greenblatt has proven inBarbieandAhsokathat she can find the depth and humanity in well-written characters, but Koa is written like a toddler who only knows three words. This could’ve been an interesting opportunity for the actor to show off her non-verbal communication skills, but the one-dimensional script gives her nothing to communicate. Driver and Greenblatt have the individual acting talent and on-screen chemistry to make a greatLone Wolf and Cubduo, but the weak script and uninspired direction completely squander that potential. What could’ve beenAlienswith dinosaursorThe Last of Uswith dinosaurs is just a hollow, empty experience.
The writer-director duo behind65, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who showed signs of great screenwriting talent with their uniquely constructed script for semi-silent sci-fi thrillerA Quiet Place, bungled their direction of65. Even if they had written a terrific script, it would’ve been wasted on their sloppy direction. If they’d gotten John Krasinski to direct65, at least it would’ve had some tension. He would’ve done a much better job of inspiring deeper performances from Driver and Greenblatt, too, and giving them the room to develop a real dynamic.
Beck and Woods have directed their own scripts before – the 2014 found-footage effortNightlightand the 2019 slasherHaunt– but65was their first big-budget outing with a major studio and real movie stars, and they don’t yet have the directorial prowess to pull off an action-adventure blockbuster. Whenever the dinosaurs are on-screen and the heroes are supposedly in danger, Beck and Woods do nothing to build any tension. Steven Spielberg created more terror and suspense with a cup of water than Beck and Woods do in their entire film. Every potentially great set-piece is ruined by awkward camerawork and choppy editing. Once Mills starts using his magical futuristic laser gun, which pulverizes dinosaurs with a single shot, the movie just devolves into a game ofSpace Invaderswith Mills effortlessly mowing down legions of raptors.
Last but not least, one of the biggest factors that prevented65from living up to its potential was its PG-13 rating. There are some horror movies thatmanage to frighten audiences on a PG-13 rating–A Quiet Placeis one of them – but those movies had stakes and suspense, which65lacks. It could’ve made up for its shortcomings with some good old-fashioned R-rated bloodshed, but its PG-13 rating means that scenes of dinosaurs sinking their razor-sharp teeth into Adam Driver’s legs are completely bloodless and, therefore, completely ineffective.
