Susan Granger’s review of “65” (Sony Entertainment/Columbia Pictures)
“Before the advent of time – in the infinity of space – a visitor crash landed on Earth.” That’s the introduction to the sci-fi action adventure “65,” named because dinosaurs roamed the Earth 65 million years ago.
The story begins as Mills (Adam Driver), an astronaut, bids farewell to his wife and very sick daughter. To pay for her medical care, he has agreed to a two-year mission which goes awry when an asteroid shower damages his spaceship, forcing him to crash-land on a mysterious planet inhabited by prehistoric creatures.
Mills roams around for a while, averting ravenous predators, but – before he’s reduced to talking to a Wilson volley ball – like Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” – he finds another survivor, a little girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), who was a passenger on his ship and doesn’t speak English. Obviously, she reminds him of the daughter he left behind.
Together, they’re determined to find the escape pod that’s somewhere in the spaceship’s strewn wreckage, and Koa is savvy enough to save Mills from certain death when he’s trapped in quicksand.
Created and directed by the screenwriting team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (“A Quiet Place”), it strives for suspense but utilizes too many jump scares, playing like the kind of grade B-creature feature that used to be drive-in theater fare. But – since it reportedly cost $91 million – it’s not a cheapo production.
Cinematographer Salvatore Totino takes full advantage of location filming in Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana and several forests in Oregon. But all too often it evokes memories of far-better “Jurassic Park” scenes, like spying a gigantic footprint in the mud and having a ferocious Tyrannosaurs Rex in hot pursuit as a massive meteor hurtles toward Earth.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “65” is a dreary, under-developed 4, streaming on Prime Video, Vudu, iTunes, and Google Play.
