Highlights
- Despite its exciting premise and high-concept potential, "65" failed to deliver as solid pulp entertainment, leaving audiences underwhelmed.
- The thinly drawn character development and lack of depth in the script hindered the performances of talented actors like Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt.
- The inexperience of the directorial duo, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, resulted in a lack of tension, poorly executed set-pieces, and a failure to capitalize on the film's potential for suspense.
With the simple yet effective elevator pitch of Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs, how did 65 turn 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. 65 was hyped up to be Event Horizon meets Jurassic 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 of Black Mirror. But 65 ended 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, 65 opens 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 and crash-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.
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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, in Barbie and young Ahsoka Tano in the Clone Wars flashback sequences in Ahsoka. Greenblatt, like Driver, deserves much stronger material than this. The first thing that lets 65 down 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 in Barbie and Ahsoka that 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 great Lone Wolf and Cub duo, but the weak script and uninspired direction completely squander that potential. What could’ve been Aliens with dinosaurs or The Last of Us with dinosaurs is just a hollow, empty experience.
The writer-director duo behind 65, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who showed signs of great screenwriting talent with their uniquely constructed script for semi-silent sci-fi thriller A Quiet Place, bungled their direction of 65. Even if they had written a terrific script, it would’ve been wasted on their sloppy direction. If they’d gotten John Krasinski to direct 65, 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 effort Nightlight and the 2019 slasher Haunt – but 65 was 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 of Space Invaders with Mills effortlessly mowing down legions of raptors.
Last but not least, one of the biggest factors that prevented 65 from living up to its potential was its PG-13 rating. There are some horror movies that manage to frighten audiences on a PG-13 rating – A Quiet Place is one of them – but those movies had stakes and suspense, which 65 lacks. 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.