65 (2023) – Bleh!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 27th July
Seen: 24th August

The writing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods earned a special place in modern horror history when they wrote the script for the incredible film The Quiet Place, to this date still one of the tensest films this reviewer has had the delight of seeing. While the finished film shares that credit with John Krasinski (who did a rewrite of Beck and Woods’ script), the core concept came from this dynamic duo who would follow it up with a pretty enjoyable horror film called Haunt, proving they had some pretty great ideas in their back pockets ready to go. So with those two men behind the script and directorial duties for 65, along with a lead performance by Adam Driver and a concept involving space travel and dinosaurs you would think this would lead to something of a fun time… you would be wrong, fun implies feeling and that’s not something 65 elicits easily.

65 introduces us to a space pilot called Mills (Adam Driver) who, despite living in the distant future on an alien planet, still needs to earn money in order to buy life-saving medicine for his dying daughter and so he signs up for a two-year mission that will earn him the required money. Of course, this mission goes horribly wrong when an asteroid hits the ship and he crash lands the ship he’s piloting on a strange planet known as Earth, but not modern day Earth but Earth from 65 million years ago (That’s why the film is called 65, yes the film revels in the slow reveal of why it’s called that) in a way that makes him the only survivor… Well, except for one girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) who doesn’t speak English. The two of them need to work together to get to an escape shuttle that happens to be on the top of a mountain which they could use to get back home, but of course the language barrier is going to make things just that much harder.

In terms of concept, 65 almost has something going for it. Someone from an alien planet landing on Earth in the time of the dinosaurs is something that should be just a lot of fun, you get a bunch of wild alien technology against some of the most legendary creatures of all time and you have a recipe for some quality cheesy fun, as an idea it works but in execution it’s somehow just completely dull. It’s almost like the filmmakers thought the idea was enough and couldn’t be bothered to present the idea in a way that’s actually interesting. You don’t get the big cheesy fun action shots one might expect with this idea, you don’t get an interesting lead character (and considering the actor involved, that’s a goddamn crime in itself) and you don’t get any fun or interesting dialogue because you barely get any since the language barrier element effectively makes the small cast mute for most of the film.

That last part is what’s particularly surprising about 65, the fact that somehow this creative team couldn’t work out how to make another film with a silent cast work. Now part of this could just be because at least in A Quiet Place the characters knew each other and had some way of communicating, something that’s not really happening in this film. The two main characters can barely communicate and thus there’s no connection, nothing for the audience to really grab onto… and considering the obvious idea that Koa is essentially a substitute for Mills’ daughter it’s wild how there isn’t even THAT for us to cling to. 

It doesn’t feel like we’re following a pair of interesting characters on some dramatic adventure, we’re following two bits of paper that are slowly being moved up a mountain over the course of 90 minutes. It feels like a waste of Adam Driver who can absolutely deliver a great performance and should’ve been given the material to do that, Instead he just occasionally explains what is about to happen and then does it. There’s no flavour here, the character is a blank slate that the audience can’t connect with on any level. Now I’m not saying I would’ve preferred some quippy action movie cliche character, but at least that would be an active choice that 65 feels afraid to make.

Just when you think 65’s blandness can’t get any more obvious, it pulls off its biggest trick… it makes “Space weapons vs. Dinosaurs” into the most boring thing possible. There’s maybe one scene where the space weapons are even being used against the dinosaurs and it might as well just be a regular-looking gun. There’s nothing big or fun or bombastic going on, nothing that would require this to be about a guy from another planet crashing on Earth, no reason for the big enemy to be dinosaurs, absolutely nothing! There are so many potentially cool ideas here that should make for a fun, silly action film but they forgot to actually include the ‘fun’ part.

65 just kind of exists, going through the bare-bones plot of something that clearly wants to be entertaining but somehow forgets to actually to the part where they entertain. It’s the kind of film that you forget you’re watching while it’s still playing, it gives the audience nothing to work with and doesn’t seem to even try and do anything interesting. What should’ve been an easy fun time turned into an hour and a half of absolute waste with nothing to show for it at the end. It’s not even actively bad, it’s not actively anything and that’s probably even worse than if it was just a bad film. I’ll take bad over boring any damn day.