65
Sony Pictures Releasing65 million years a Dinosaurs inhabited Earth. 65 sees one man' (Adam Driver)’s spaceship will crash land on Earth in the days leading up to their extinction. How did he crash when technology like this did not exist then? Did he time travel? What about the other colony where Driver’s character lives in? How are medicine and technology so advanced? Why does he have to go on a mission to pay for his daughter’s (Chloe Coleman) medication? How does any of this work? 65 doesn’t seem too interested in answering any of these questions.
65 has way too many plotholes or screenwriting inconsistencies in only five minutes to make the entire trip to “65 million years ago” believable. And yet, with a story like this, the only thing writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have to do is keep it simple. Still, they insist on presenting interesting ideas and semi-futuristic concepts without explaining them. Do they want to move the story along or create a fully realized world that envelops audiences and invests them into the adventure where Driver’s character and Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) must go to the other end of their ship to escape the planet before a giant meteor crashes on Earth and leads to the extinction of Dinosaurs? That sounds like a fun “race against time” premise. However, since the movie never explains anything it presents, asking audiences to suspend their disbelief without elaborating on how this futurized colony works, the movie falls flat relatively quickly.
For 97% of the runtime, 65 contains two characters. The film has plenty of time to develop their relationship, even at a tight 93-minute runtime. But since the two characters speak in different languages, the film barely touches upon their relationship. Instead, it gets Adam Driver to gesture the words he wants to get to Koa, who speaks an invented language. But how exactly does this colonized world operate? What are the differences between each “clan”? A movie this short with a plot this brief shouldn’t make the audiences ask too many questions.
Some will say not to overthink, since this is supposed to be a big and dumb survival film with Dinosaurs in it, and that’s fine. However, not overthinking things also comes with a script and a world that’s fully realized. Even M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth presented the world the characters inhabited before thwarting them in a survival plot. 65 barely does that. The film presents the main stakes but never develops them further than that. But most of the stakes are rendered useless after a reveal occurs during the first ten minutes of the movie, making the rest of it feel completely empty.
It also doesn’t help that the film’s atmosphere is a complete disaster. Long, overhead shots of pterodactyls flying while Driver and Greenblatt are walking in the grass are tarnished by a pterodactyl flying at the screen, screeching to create a jump-scare. Or how about the scene where another Dinosaur jumps at the screen where Driver is looking at a cliff? There are no thrills in 65, but instead, many loud and obnoxious jump scares that grind any attempt at establishing a vast and expansive atmosphere to a halt.
And none of the action scenes are thrilling. Salvatore Totino is a gifted cinematographer who tries to do his best throughout the entire movie, but the editing hampers any form of tension and turns it into a complete joke. Scenes that should be serious are unintentionally hilarious by how the editors make the weirdest cuts at the oddest occasion, instead of letting the atmosphere and the action speak for themselves. What’s worse is that none of the visual effects look good. In a post-Jurassic Park era, that feels criminal.
Despite this, Driver and Greenblatt try to do their best with the poor screenplay they’ve received. It may have helped if both characters understood each other, to truly solidify their bond, since the film spends way too much time creating a language barrier that feels completely ineffective. But the worst thing about 65 is that it cannot even be enjoyed by turning one’s brain off – it’s a soulless, loud, and overbearing attempt at a survival thriller, with no thrills, and too many inconsistencies for a mainstream audience to enjoy.