“65” is an unexpectedly-enjoyable post-Oscars sci-fi drama: Mills (Adam Driver) crash lands on an unknown planet. He survives with a 9-year-old passenger, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). They need to get back to the escape pod at the top of a mountain.
It’s called 65 because they unknowingly have returned to earth 65 million years ago, and their bad guys along the way are various sizes of dinosaurs. Even worse than those heavy-duty villains is an out-of-control meteorite, which every school kid knows knocked out the bad boys after crashing on the Yucatan Peninsula those years ago.
Sounds like boilerplate sci-fi, but there’s more to it than would appear at this dead time for movies after Oscar. First of all Driver is a genuine movie star who brings gravitas the way Gregory Peck did both in their heroic figure and their deliberate diction with deep, knowing tones.
Add to that an actress with soulful eyes, and you have a film much more than sci fi or monster movie—it’s a survival story with little dialogue (she doesn’t speak English) but lots of heart. The alienation she feels about him being the pilot who loses her family in the crash morphs to a codependency leaning into love. Family is the touchstone theme that will please every family member and provide just the right scares for an exciting cinematic adventure.
That they have landed back on earth recalls such sci-fi adventures as in The Twilight Zone where astronauts unknowingly land back on earth. The heart of this surprising romance is the human survival bonding, not the dinos who start 65 with raptors and move inexorably to T-Rex town. Even they don’t count as much as the two leads running their marathon to the rescue plane and discovering feelings and a willingness to take risks for survival and each other.
Besides the usual dino dilemma, they have to outpace the historic meteorite that wiped out the world 65 million years ago. The illustration of the incoming rock and its spawn is impressive given the obviously limited CGI budget. Fittingly, writers Beck and Woods showed their chops with A Quiet Place and producer Sam Rami (Spiderman, Evil Dead), well, you can feel his genial presence.
Although 65 has some horror-film tropes like jump scares and don’t- go-there audience reactions, it is still a sci-fi that emphasizes the importance of family, regardless of what millennium it happens to occupy.
65
Director: Scott Beck (Haunt), Bryan Woods (Nightlight)
Screenplay: Beck, Woods
Cast: Adam Driver (House of Gucci), Arianna Greenblatt (Awake)
Run Time: 1h 33m
Rating: PG 13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
