Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

movie reviews 65

Now streaming on:

You’d think a movie in which Adam Driver fights a bunch of dinosaurs couldn’t possibly be boring, but that’s exactly what “65” is.

This is a movie that would have benefitted from being a whole lot stupider. The big-budget sci-fi flick—which reportedly cost $91 million to make and was featured in a Super Bowl ad—should have embraced its inherent B-movie roots. Instead, it tries to juggle a wild survival story with a poignant family drama, but both elements feel so rushed and underdeveloped that neither ends up registering. There’s nothing to these characters, and the action sequences quickly grow repetitive and wearisome. There’s a jump scare, insistent notes from an overbearing score, some running and screaming, the gnashing of teeth, and maybe an injury before a narrow escape. Over and over and over again.

But the film from the writing-directing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods , whose credits include co-writing “ A Quiet Place ” with John Krasinski , offers an intriguingly contradictory premise. It takes place 65 million years ago, but suggests that futuristic civilizations existed back then on planets throughout the universe. On one of them, Driver stars as a space pilot named Mills. He’s about to embark on a two-year exploratory mission in order to afford medical treatment for his ailing daughter ( Chloe Coleman from “ My Spy ,” who’s featured in the film’s prelude and sporadic video snippets).

On the way to his destination, the ship Mills is flying enters an unexpected asteroid field, gets torn to shreds, and crashes. All of the passengers in cryogenic sleep are killed—except one, who just happens to be a girl around the same age as his daughter. Her name is Koa, and she’s played by Ariana Greenblatt . And the planet, which has swampy terrain reminiscent of Dagobah, just happens to be—wait for it—Earth.

“65” requires Mills and Koa to schlep from the wreckage to a mountaintop so they can commandeer the escape pod that’s perched there and fly out before dinosaurs can stomp and chomp on them. The creatures can be startling at times, but at other times they look so cheesy and fake, they’re like the animatronics you’d see at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. And yet! It almost would have been better—or at least more entertaining—if “65” had leaned harder into that silliness if it had played with the basic ridiculousness of mixing complex technology with the Cretaceous period. They rarely use Mills’ advanced gadgets in any inspired ways within this prehistoric setting. The few attempts at humor fall flat—they mainly consist of Koa making fun of Mills for being uptight—and moments of peril wrap up too tidily for us to luxuriate in their anxiety. 

Worst of all, Driver doesn’t get to ham it up nearly enough here. He’s an actor of great intensity, which can be both thrilling and amusing if he’s amping it up in a knowing way. Imagine him screaming “More!!!” as he’s blasting Luke Skywalker in “ Star Wars: The Last Jedi ,” or punching a wall during an argument in “ Marriage Story .” But the man he plays in “65” is blandly heroic and just seems generally annoyed. Greenblatt, meanwhile, does the best she can with a character we know absolutely nothing about. Koa speaks a language that’s not English, so most of her exchanges with Mills consist of mimicking the basic words he says to her, including “family.” There’s no real bond between them, but neither is there any sort of prickly tension since they’re stuck with each other. “The Last of Us,” this is not.

Beck and Woods offer some clever camerawork here and there, but also some erratic editing choices. And they borrow quite a bit from the “ Jurassic Park ” franchise: a giant footprint in the mud or a dinosaur’s yellow eye leering menacingly through a window. But maybe that’s inevitable at this point. Their film only gets truly enjoyably nutty toward the end, with its climactic combination of a sneaky quicksand patch, a ravenous Tyrannosaurus rex, a well-timed geyser eruption, and a catastrophic asteroid shower. But by then, it’s too late for us—and the planet.

Now in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Now playing

movie reviews 65

Hundreds of Beavers

Matt zoller seitz.

movie reviews 65

The Nature of Love

Peyton robinson.

movie reviews 65

Lady in the Lake

Kaiya shunyata.

movie reviews 65

Sisi & I

Tomris laffly.

movie reviews 65

Robert Daniels

movie reviews 65

My Spy The Eternal City

Film credits.

65 movie poster

Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images.

Adam Driver as Mills

Ariana Greenblatt as Koa

Chloe Coleman as Nevine

Nika King as Alya

  • Bryan Woods

Cinematographer

  • Salvatore Totino
  • Chris Bacon

Latest blog posts

movie reviews 65

The Fairy Tale Shoes: Interview With the Cast and Crew of Cuckoo

movie reviews 65

On the Trail: India Donaldson on Good One

movie reviews 65

The Texture of Night: How Collateral Revolutionized Movies

movie reviews 65

SDCC 2024: Activations, Apes and Other Animals

Advertisement

Supported by

‘65’ Review: What on Earth?

Millions of years ago, a guy from another planet landed on this one. Like most survivors, he had a moody little girl with him.

  • Share full article

In a film scene, a man and a young girl stand in a dense forest, looking worried.

By A.O. Scott

To paraphrase an old Monty Python sketch , nobody suspects the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction.

Certainly the poor dinosaurs didn’t, though for their more obsessive present-day human fans the fact that this movie is called “65” — as in million years ago — might count as a spoiler. When Mills the space pilot crash-lands on a muddy, reptile-infested Earth after his vessel is hit by an asteroid, you might have an inkling of the larger disaster in store.

I don’t mean the movie; that would be unkind. “65,” directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (two writers of the first “Quiet Place” film), is not interesting enough to be truly terrible or terrible enough to be halfway interesting. As Mills, Adam Driver does a lot of breathing and grunting as he runs a gantlet of familiar dangers. In addition to the T. rexes and other saurian menaces, he faces quicksand, large bugs, falling rocks, malfunctioning equipment and the withering judgment of a 9-year-old girl.

But let’s back up a second. Who are these people, and how did they get to our planet before (if I may quote the opening titles) “the advent of mankind”? The answer is that they belonged to an ancient extraterrestrial civilization, one sufficiently advanced to have invented not only space travel, but the usual array of futuristic sci-fi technology.

Their health care system was pretty bad, though. Mills’s adolescent daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman), suffers from a persistent, apparently life-threatening cough, and the only way he can afford her treatment is by taking on a high-paying “long-range exploratory mission.” He’s already grief-stricken when the asteroid hits, cleaving his spaceship in two and killing all of his cryogenically frozen passengers except one, a girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt).

The folks on their home planet, realistically enough, speak more than one language, so Koa and Mills — whose native idiom is English — can’t communicate very well. Also, he’s a grumpy, unhappy man and she’s a moody girl, so we’re on familiar survival-story terrain. “65” is a little like “ The Last of Us ,” but with dinosaurs instead of mushrooms and no obvious sociological theme that would sustain a think piece.

Which would be to its credit, if it managed to be a simple, effective action movie. Or science-fiction movie. Or scary movie. Or something. Like Mills’s emotional back story, the special effects seem to have been pulled out of a box of secondhand ideas. Nor is the execution all that impressive. There’s little in the way of awe, suspense or surprise. Just a quickly hatched plan to get off this God-forsaken planet and leave it to its fate.

65 Rated PG-13. Dinosaur blood and prehistoric curses. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Rotten Tomatoes Newsletter

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

  • Upcoming Movies and TV shows
  • Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
  • Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

  • What's the Tomatometer®?
  • Login/signup

movie reviews 65

Movies in theaters

  • Opening this week
  • Top box office
  • Coming soon to theaters
  • Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

  • Fandango at Home
  • Prime Video
  • Most popular streaming movies
  • What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

  • 77% Cuckoo Link to Cuckoo
  • 97% Dìdi Link to Dìdi
  • 97% Good One Link to Good One

New TV Tonight

  • 95% Industry: Season 3
  • -- Emily in Paris: Season 4
  • -- Bad Monkey: Season 1
  • -- Bel-Air: Season 3
  • -- Rick and Morty: The Anime: Season 1
  • -- Solar Opposites: Season 5
  • -- SEAL Team: Season 7
  • -- RuPaul's Drag Race Global All Stars: Season 1
  • -- Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures: Season 2
  • -- Worst Ex Ever: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

  • 59% The Umbrella Academy: Season 4
  • 81% A Good Girl's Guide to Murder: Season 1
  • 78% Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
  • 95% Batman: Caped Crusader: Season 1
  • 100% Supacell: Season 1
  • 77% Lady in the Lake: Season 1
  • 78% Mr. Throwback: Season 1
  • 100% Women in Blue: Season 1
  • 78% Presumed Innocent: Season 1
  • Best TV Shows
  • Most Popular TV
  • TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

  • 95% Batman: Caped Crusader: Season 1 Link to Batman: Caped Crusader: Season 1
  • All-Time Lists
  • Binge Guide
  • Comics on TV
  • Five Favorite Films
  • Video Interviews
  • Weekend Box Office
  • Weekly Ketchup
  • What to Watch

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Weekend Box Office: Deadpool & Wolverine Crosses $1 Billion

Everything We Saw at Disney’s 2024 D23 Entertainment Showcase

  • Trending on RT
  • Video Game Movies
  • Best Movies of 2024
  • Re-Release Calendar
  • TV Premiere Dates

movie reviews 65

Writers and directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods put a lot on the film’s shoulders. They got butts in the theater with the sci fi action premise, but the heart of the film is a thin, trite indie drama about grief and finding a reason to continue to live.

Full Review | Jun 2, 2024

movie reviews 65

It was the worst of times, it was the end of times. For the characters anyway. Not as bad I had heard, 65 is improved by the performances and also the constant pummelling that pre-historic Earth doles out to poor old Mills.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 21, 2024

movie reviews 65

...a pared-down premise that’s employed to mostly compelling (and periodically spellbinding) effect...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 30, 2023

movie reviews 65

Watches so much like an adaptation of a classic pulp dime novel...

Full Review | Dec 25, 2023

movie reviews 65

65 may not be as refined or ravishing as the other survival thrillers or sci-fi adventures, but if you’re tired of mush and masculinity, this may be a slightly different experience.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2023

movie reviews 65

Silly but too serious, kinda exciting and pretty familiar.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 28, 2023

movie reviews 65

Wasted potential with an excellent lead, dinosaur mayhem & nice sci-fi gadgets.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2023

The limited cast of two major players and a script that allows for little flexibility leaves the production as just being bland.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 9, 2023

movie reviews 65

65 is as unimaginative and predictable as anticipated, only even less entertaining and far more bland. Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt try their best. A dinosaur flick this uninteresting should be considered a cinephilic crime.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jul 21, 2023

movie reviews 65

A no-frills, no-thrills dud.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 6, 2023

movie reviews 65

65 should only be recommended after one has run out of films to watch, which might not be for many years.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 5, 2023

movie reviews 65

A passable sci-fi survival adventure pushes a thin premise to a mercifully short end.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 2, 2023

movie reviews 65

Driver is always very good no matter what role he takes on, whether it is a spaceship pilot battling dinosaurs or Darth Vader's grandson battling the force and the inner conflict that wages war inside him.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 1, 2023

movie reviews 65

The whole desperate dad thing gets wearisome as if the movie were conscientiously telling lonely 9-year-olds how much their absent work-junkie fathers actually love them. Which it is. Driver’s big salary-earning business trip isn’t happening “to you."

Full Review | May 29, 2023

movie reviews 65

It’s maybe too slim and uninspired for its own good, but it’s quick enough to where you aren’t all that bothered by the time spent with it.

Full Review | May 27, 2023

movie reviews 65

Driver makes it all stick. It’s his first lead role in the action hero genre, and he adds depth and nuance to a thinly written role. We don’t know much about Mills, but the actor keeps us plugged in due to his ability to elevate material.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 27, 2023

movie reviews 65

Confusingly bland and riddled with plot holes, 65 doesn’t give its talented lead much to work with.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2023

movie reviews 65

Dreary, under-developed wannabe sci-fi action adventure that strives for suspense but plays like the kind of grade B-creature feature that used to be drive-in theater fare.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Apr 19, 2023

movie reviews 65

With excellent, double-strength VFX and whole-hearted embrace of B-movie aesthetics, 65 is terrific entertainment with outstanding action cinematography giving the film a visual polish that sits several grades above what we typically see in Marvel films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 16, 2023

Nothing really sinks its teeth in deep enough to draw blood, metaphorically speaking, of course.

Full Review | Apr 12, 2023

an image, when javascript is unavailable

‘65’ Review: Adam Driver Battles Dinosaurs and Other Stone-Age Story Ideas in Derivative Thriller

'A Quiet Place' writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods direct a prehistoric adventure that feels like it's 65 million movies in the making.

By Todd Gilchrist

Todd Gilchrist

  • Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Opus’ Offers a Posthumous Celebration of the Japanese Musical Icon’s Work 4 days ago
  • Super7 to Commemorate MF Doom and Madlib’s ‘Madvillainy’ With ‘All Caps’ Video-Inspired Action Figure (EXCLUSIVE) 1 week ago
  • ‘Torso,’ Sergio Martino’s Trailblazing 1973 Slasher Film, Set For 4K Release in September 2 weeks ago

65

Related Stories

Training ai with tv & film content: how licensing deals look, taylor swift's 'tortured poets department' reclaims no. 1 spot on albums chart, popular on variety.

Identifying the distant remains of the rest of their ship using a handful of relics from his technologically advanced culture, Mills and Koa make a difficult trek across terrain filled with quicksand, steam-filled geysers, life-threatening flora and a variety of dinosaur species. But even as they overcome each new hazard, a much bigger one appears: the asteroid that felled their ship is on a collision course with Earth. They soon find themselves in a race against the clock to get to the ship’s escape pod before either dying in a planet-leveling fireball or being eaten by a carnivorous reptile.

But those quiet moments also give the audience to wonder: so a humanlike species from another planet, armed with the technology for interstellar travel (not to mention laser guns and 3D GPS) came to Earth 65 million years ago, long before humankind existed — and the point is “just” that they’re trying to get back home? Seems like a long way to travel to go nowhere particularly meaningful.

That said, Beck and Woods make dinosaurs frightening for the first time in decades, thanks to some classic misdirection and staging that involves a lot of shadows to make the audience say “nope” when the characters decide to plumb further into them. If their filmmaking isn’t particularly inventive, the duo approach it with the same kind of sturdy proficiency they use when borrowing scenes or genre boilerplate to tell their stories. “A Quiet Place” worked because it gently tweaked a lot of familiar formulas and then director John Krasinski executed the whole thing with a workmanlike attention to detail; “65” doesn’t have the same core emotionality holding it together (this family is fractured, not fighting to stay together), but behind the cameras Beck and Woods merely service their ideas rather than strengthening them from the page.

At just 93 minutes, ”65” feels pleasantly diverting in competition with a glut of sequels that include “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Creed III,” “Scream VI” and “John Wick Chapter 4” — not that anything in it is all that original. Then again, perhaps the reason it still falls short is because the idea of a standalone story seems too good to be true in an era of cinematic universes, especially given the fact that buried in its premise, before the title card even, is the idea there’s more than just our own to explore.

In which case, the best thing for “65” would be that no more installments follow, but if it proves a hit, audiences couldn’t possibly be that lucky. Who were Mills’ other passengers? Why was he transporting them? In what way do his “people” relate, genetically, or otherwise, to ordinary humans? These are all questions that you can see Sony salivating at the prospect of answering in a sequel or spinoff, but they all feel more intriguing without some sort of canonical answer. In which case, “65” is a film whose past feels like it was 65 million movies in the making, and its future depends on a several hundred millions in box office revenue. They best way to enjoy it is to let go of all that and be present.

Reviewed at Thalberg Screening Room, Los Angeles, March 9, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 93 MIN.

  • Production: A Sony release of Columbia Pictures presentation of a Bron Creative, Raimi Prods., Beck Woods production. Producers: Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling, Zainab Azizi, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods. Executive producers: Maryann Brandon, Doug Merrifield, Jason Cloth, Aaron L. Gilbert.
  • Crew: Directors, writers: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods. Camera: Salvatore Totino. Editors: Josh Schaeffer, Jane Tones. Music: Chris Bacon
  • With: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman.

More from Variety

‘the monkey’ teaser: theo james is covered in blood in ‘longlegs’ director’s new stephen king adaptation, with redbox’s demise, the dvd rental business bottoms out, content owner lawsuits against ai companies: complete updated index, more from our brands, the best back to school tech deals: save on apple, bose, and samsung, this $25 million blufftop home near san diego takes its design cues from a superyacht, kevin durant becomes psg limited partner through arctos, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, tvline items: the old man season 2 trailer, vmas change date and more.

Quantcast

65

10 Mar 2023

Given they are the subject of the one-time biggest box-office hit in history ( Jurassic Park , naturally), it’s a wonder that Hollywood hasn’t embraced dinosaurs more. Bringing the wildest dreams of small children to life seems like an obvious win for blockbuster filmmakers looking for some paleontological pleasures at the picturehouse; special effects wizards like Ray Harryhausen and Phil Tippett once kept them alive in the cinematic imagination but these days, outside of the ongoing Jurassic series, big-screen dinosaurs are a rare beast.

65

Now, finally, comes this dino-disaster-movie from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who have — as with their script for A Quiet Place — sketched another simple but effective sci-fi premise: what if a spaceman from another world crash-landed on our planet, 65 million years ago, at the tail end of the Cretaceous Period? It’s a basic idea which reframes dinosaurs not as the terrible lizards of wonder that captivated young minds in science classes, but deadly, terrifyingly unknown aliens.

This is a very straightforward, efficient kind of blockbuster. Following some rather gloopy exposition back on his home planet which establishes him as a stock-in-trade Sad Dad, Adam Driver ’s Mills crash lands on Earth within ten minutes. There is so little flab here, it is almost skeletal: not counting the prehistoric beasties, there are only four speaking roles, and one of them doesn’t even speak English. That would be Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), Mills’ fellow survivor, quickly taking the role of surrogate daughter for his real one, who is suffering from an unspecified illness (we’ll call it ‘Character Motivation Syndrome’).

65 breaks no new ground. But it is a short, sharp, largely original studio movie.

In the spaceman-falling-to-a-planet-that-turns-out-to-be-ours setup, there are faint echoes of Planet Of The Apes , but Beck and Woods aren’t especially interested in making any kind of satirical commentary on our world, past or present. Instead the film lurches into a lean genre exercise, a survivalist thriller that occasionally draws from the filmmakers’ horror background. The sheer hostility of prehistoric nature means peril is always lurking, the experience always at some degree of stress.

It plays more or less as you might expect: there are problems that require solving; there is a journey requiring the characters to get from A to B; there is, unhelpfully, the odd Tyrannosaurus rex in between those two points. The dinosaurs are fun and frightening (even if — sorry, paleontologists! — none of them have feathers here), and while plot holes loom like falling asteroids, it is at the very least handsomely presented, blending epic landscape cinematography — including lush location shooting in Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest — with solid, subtle CGI.

It’s also bound together by a typically compelling Adam Driver performance. As he did in three Star Wars films , Driver brings a thoughtfulness to his genre character even when the screenplay doesn’t, a humanistic approach that grounds the bombastic silliness around him. He shares an easy warmth with Greenblatt, too, despite their characters speaking different languages, her character having hailed from the "upper territories" of their home planet. They commit, admirably, to the project at hand.

65 breaks no new cinematic ground, upends no rules, challenges no clichés. But it is a short, sharp, largely original major studio movie, unbound to any franchise or intellectual property — at a time when such a concept is being threatened with extinction. Also, it has a T-Rex in it. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Related Articles

Adam Driver in 65

Movies | 26 01 2023

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Movies | 22 12 2022

Adam Driver in 65

Movies | 14 12 2022

an image, when javascript is unavailable

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

’65’ review: adam driver fights dinosaurs in an underwhelming sci-fi actioner.

An astronaut from another planet and a little girl find themselves battling dinos on Earth 65 million years ago in this film from the writers of 'A Quiet Place.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share to Flipboard
  • Send an Email
  • Show additional share options
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Share on Whats App
  • Print the Article
  • Post a Comment

Ariana Greenblatt

Related Stories

'crawl 2' heats up at paramount as horror thriller eyes fall shoot (exclusive), adam driver to star in off-broadway play 'hold on to me darling'.

In any case, said mission goes awry because of a nasty asteroid storm that causes the ship to crash on Earth, the only other survivor being Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), a little girl who doesn’t understand English and is understandably shaken up by the experience. Especially since not long after the crash, the pair find themselves in a strange world populated by an array of dinosaurs who all seem to be very hungry and very, very cranky.

The filmmakers, who previously collaborated with John Krasinski on the screenplay for the first A Quiet Place film, clearly love dinosaurs and nasty alien creatures in general. The same could be said of Sam Raimi , one of the producers. That childlike enthusiasm permeates every frame of 65 , which plays like something you might have seen at a drive-in decades ago on a double-bill with The Valley of Gwangi or When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth .

But the gimmick wears thin quickly. Most of the running time consists of scenes in which the two characters run into one or more screaming dinos before they manage to shoot or blast them into oblivion. Rinse and repeat. When Driver’s character almost perishes by falling into quicksand, it practically feels like a palate cleanser. The special effects are fine, but aren’t likely to cause Steven Spielberg to lose any sleep.

Nor is the dialogue particularly scintillating, since it mainly consists of Mills speaking a few words and Koa repeating them quizzically. (She does, however, immediately grasp his meaning when he shouts, “Run!”). Nonetheless, the relationship between the two does generate some warmth, with Koa serving as a substitute daughter who rouses Mills’ protective paternal instincts. Before the story concludes, the feisty little girl holds her own, saving his bacon more than once. Unfortunately, the pair’s dynamic also calls to mind the current HBO series The Last of Us , and doesn’t benefit from the comparison.

Full credits

Thr newsletters.

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Halle berry says she’s broken 10 bones from action movies: “i’ve been knocked out three times”, theo james gets bloody in neon’s ‘the monkey’ teaser from ‘longlegs’ director osgood perkins, from grief to leadership: building a movement in mike brown’s memory (guest column), heather graham joins zazie beetz in horror thriller ‘they will kill you’ (exclusive), james cameron talks ‘avatar,’ ‘alien: romulus’ and whales in spicy chat: “damn right i’m overbearing”, jimmy kimmel explains why he will not host the 2025 oscars.

Quantcast

  • Stranger Things Season 5
  • Deadpool and Wolverine
  • The Batman 2
  • Spider-Man 4
  • Yellowstone Season 6
  • Fallout Season 2
  • The Last of Us Season 2
  • Entertainment

65 review: a simple, bare-bones sci-fi thriller

Adam Driver wears a futuristic spacesuit in 65.

“65 is a simple but effective sci-fi thriller that, thankfully, doesn't overstay its welcome.”
  • Adam Driver's committed lead performance
  • A lean 93-minute runtime
  • Several intense, clever action sequences
  • A messy, unpolished visual style
  • An overly familiar story

The new movie 65 is a refreshingly unambitious sci-fi blockbuster.

Written and directed by A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the film is a straightforward, tight thriller that’s interested in little more than forcing its star, Adam Driver, to repeatedly fight a bunch of dinosaurs and other dangerous prehistoric creatures. The film employs no more visual effects than it absolutely needs, and it consistently makes strong use of its real-life environments and locations — most of which prove to be far more dangerous than they initially seem. In case its tight 93-minute runtime didn’t already make this clear: 65 doesn’t have any franchise aspirations, either.

The film’s world-building is concise and efficiently delivered, and Beck and Woods’ screenplay doesn’t ever seem in danger of becoming obsessed with the kind of fictional minutiae or sci-fi gobbledygook that drag down so many other modern blockbusters. Its safeness and limited scope undoubtedly prevent 65 from rising to any truly great heights. However, there’s also something thrilling about the way 65 calls back to the days in which Hollywood’s sci-fi blockbusters could still be self-contained adventures that ask no more of their viewers than 90 minutes of their undivided attention.

As is alluded to by its title, 65 takes place around 65 million years ago and centers on Mills (Driver), a work-for-hire space pilot from a distant, technologically advanced planet. The film’s simple opening scene establishes Mills’ decision to take on a two-year transport mission in order to pay for the expensive medical treatments needed by his sick daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman). In its next scene, 65 catches up with Mills’ fateful mission as it’s upended by an asteroid field that damages Mills’ ship and sends him and his passengers crashing onto a nearby, uncharted terrestrial planet.

In the wake of the crash, Mills discovers that all but one of his cryogenically asleep passengers were killed by the destruction of his ship. Mills finds and wakes up the crash’s only other survivor, a young foreign girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), who unfortunately doesn’t speak the same language as Driver’s skilled pilot. Determined to make sure that Koa gets back home safely, Mills takes her on a multiday journey to his ship’s escape vessel, which landed over a dozen kilometers away from where he and Koa ended up.

Along the way, Beck and Woods reveal that Mills hasn’t crash-landed on just any terrestrial planet, but Earth itself. Mills is, therefore, forced throughout his and Koa’s journey to use his scientifically advanced weaponry to fight off a wide range of deadly prehistoric creatures. In what likely won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has seen anything even remotely similar to 65 , Mills and Koa’s journey also results in the two characters gradually forming an intensely trusting, if unconventional, bond.

Despite what its dramatic opening title reveal would like you to believe, 65 is nowhere near as original as it thinks. Driver’s casting as Mills makes the film’s twist on a typical uncharted planet premise easy to accept, and 65 doesn’t have any more truly subversive tricks hidden up its sleeves. The film spends the bulk of its runtime following Mills and Koa as they encounter a series of dangerous creatures and obstacles over the course of their journey together. The film’s straightforward, obstacle-driven structure results in it feeling a bit repetitive in its second and third acts, which only makes the thinness of 65 ’s story feel that much more apparent at times.

There is, however, something uncomplicatedly thrilling about watching 65 ’s heroes come face-to-face with increasingly difficult challenges and still overcome them with their own brute force and intellect. There are moments throughout 65 in which Beck and Woods demonstrate the same knack for action storytelling that they did in A Quiet Place . That’s particularly true of one sequence in which Driver’s Mills is forced to fix his dislocated shoulder before a pack of dangerous, raptor-like dinosaurs get the chance to rip him and Koa apart.

Woods and Beck’s economical approach to 65 ’s story also allows the pair to make the most out of Mills’ various futuristic weapons. The duo often avoids relying on exposition by simply letting viewers watch Mills put his gadgets to use, as he does during one sequence in which he places a series of glowing markers around his and Koa’s camping spot. The character’s decision to place the markers where he does makes their purpose clear long before their yellow, pulsing lights turn red and Mills begins looking around in fear for any approaching creatures.

Beck and Woods’ visual style isn’t nearly as refined as their storytelling. There are numerous moments throughout 65 when the duo’s uneven mix of general coverage shots and dim lighting makes it difficult to maintain a clear sense of the film’s physical spaces. One underground showdown between Mills and an unidentified dinosaur is particularly confusing to watch due to both the overwhelming darkness throughout it and its lack of establishing wide shots. Beck and Woods bring much more control to some of 65 ’s other action sequences, but the duo’s visual style nonetheless comes across as disappointingly rough and messy during certain sections of the film.

Fortunately for it, 65 is luckier than most other Hollywood blockbusters because it’s led by Driver, a performer who is willing to bring the same level of commitment to films like 65 as he does to the more grounded dramas he typically stars in. Driver’s performance as Mills is so unsentimental and to the point that it ensures that the character’s rare moments of emotional vulnerability land with real force. In a way, the cut-and-dry nature of Driver’s performance is ultimately a reflection of 65 itself, a film that understands how even the most pared-down version of a story can still be compelling and entertaining if told with enough passion and focus.

65 is now playing in theaters.

Editors’ Recommendations

  • The best sci-fi movies on Max right now
  • Like Syfy’s The Ark? Then watch these 3 sci-fi shows right now
  • 5 sci-fi movies on Netflix you need to watch in July 2024
  • 5 best sci-fi movies of 2024 so far, ranked
  • 5 most scientifically accurate sci-fi movies, ranked
  • Product Reviews

Alex Welch

Sci-fi is a popular genre in literature due to its thought-provoking nature. Beyond thrilling adventures through space or fantastical realms, sci-fi books explore profound topics like the potential impact of artificial intelligence, the challenges of space exploration, and the ethical dilemmas of scientific progress. Fueled by these themes, readers are left to think beyond the page and imagine what the future holds.

That’s why sci-fi books are popular source materials in the realm of film — they bring extraordinary worlds, characters, and stories to life in a way books can't. With breathtaking visuals and immersive sound design, sci-fi movies allow audiences to truly experience stories like a televised battle royale in a dystopian world, the invasion of terrifying alien creatures, and the thrill of being sucked into a black hole.  9. The Hunger Games (2012)

As is true with most labels, dads aren't really any one thing. While there may be some qualities that unite many dads, some dads are more into sports than others, while some are into gaming or other types of entertainment. If there's a dad in your life with a love for sci-fi, though, then Netflix has plenty of titles worth checking out.

Sorting through all of them to determine which ones are actually worth watching can be a chore, though. That's why we've done the hard work for you and found five great sci-fi movies that are worth watching this Father's Day. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE - Official Trailer #2 (HD)

Netflix's latest action movie, Atlas, takes on one of the more pressing and existential issues of our time: artificial intelligence. The film, which stars Jennifer Lopez, follows a data analyst with a deep mistrust for AI who discovers that it may be the only way to take down a super soldier who is hell-bent on destroying humanity.

Although AI and movies about it feel more relevant than ever, this is hardly the first time that AI has been featured prominently in this kind of story. Long before we had the kind of real-world AI that we see today, we had movies that tackled the question head-on. We've selected three movies that expertly tackle the subject. The Creator (2023) The Creator | Official Trailer

movie reviews 65

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

  • For Parents
  • For Educators
  • Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

  • Get the app
  • Movie Reviews
  • Best Movie Lists
  • Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

movie reviews 65

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

movie reviews 65

  • Best TV Lists
  • Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
  • Common Sense Selections for TV
  • Video Reviews of TV Shows

movie reviews 65

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

movie reviews 65

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

  • Book Reviews
  • Best Book Lists
  • Common Sense Selections for Books

movie reviews 65

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

movie reviews 65

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

  • Game Reviews
  • Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

  • Video Reviews of Games

movie reviews 65

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

movie reviews 65

  • Podcast Reviews
  • Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

movie reviews 65

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

movie reviews 65

  • App Reviews
  • Best App Lists

movie reviews 65

Social Networking for Teens

movie reviews 65

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

movie reviews 65

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

  • YouTube Channel Reviews
  • YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

movie reviews 65

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

movie reviews 65

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

  • Preschoolers (2-4)
  • Little Kids (5-7)
  • Big Kids (8-9)
  • Pre-Teens (10-12)
  • Teens (13+)
  • Screen Time
  • Social Media
  • Online Safety
  • Identity and Community

movie reviews 65

How to Prepare Your Kids for School After a Summer of Screen Time

  • Family Tech Planners
  • Digital Skills
  • All Articles
  • Latino Culture
  • Black Voices
  • Asian Stories
  • Native Narratives
  • LGBTQ+ Pride
  • Best of Diverse Representation List

movie reviews 65

Multicultural Books

movie reviews 65

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

movie reviews 65

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Common sense media reviewers.

movie reviews 65

Violent, by-the-numbers sci-fi/dinosaur movie has gory bits.

65 Movie Poster: Adam Driver holds a weapon and looks alarm as a dinosaur lurks behind him

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Encourages selflessness: One character considers g

Both characters are strong and resourceful; they t

Four characters: Mills (Adam Driver), a White man,

Many are said to have died in cryosleep during cra

A few uses of "s--t." One use of "damn." A use of

Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills (Adam Driver) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's…

Positive Messages

Encourages selflessness: One character considers giving up until he discovers that there's another person to think about.

Positive Role Models

Both characters are strong and resourceful; they take turns helping each other out of scrapes, working to overcome difficult odds.

Diverse Representations

Four characters: Mills (Adam Driver), a White man, is the central character. Young Koa is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who is of Puerto Rican heritage. Mills' wife (seen in prologue), played by Nika King, is Black. Their mixed-race daughter, Nevine, is played by Chloe Coleman, who is of African, Eastern European, and English descent. Mills' insistence on Koa learning English -- rather than trying to understand her language -- supports dominant power structures.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Many are said to have died in cryosleep during crash-landing. Dead bodies lie in a swamp. Girl in peril. Main character shoots laser-like space gun. Splattering dinosaur blood. Explosions. Main character pulls metal shard out of bloody wound. Character attacked by small dinosaur; he bashes it to death with gun butt. Main character falls out of tree; painfully snapping dislocated shoulder back into place. Dinosaur stabbed with pointed tusk. Quicksand. Dinosaur corpse covered in blood and maggots. Burned, gory dinosaur corpse. Red-tinted water sloshing on ship. Fiery crash-landing. Dinosaurs attack and eat one another. Asteroids colliding with ship. Main character briefly considers death by suicide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "s--t." One use of "damn." A use of "oh God" while in pain.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills ( Adam Driver ) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ). Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's splattering dinosaur blood/gore, and Mills pulls a shard of metal out of his own bloody wound. Mills also shoots a space-laser gun at dinosaurs and bashes a small dinosaur to death with the butt of his gun. There are also explosions and falls from high places, and a character briefly considers death by suicide. A girl is sometimes in peril. Language includes a few uses of "s--t," plus "damn" and "oh God." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

movie reviews 65

Community Reviews

  • Parents say (7)
  • Kids say (10)

Based on 7 parent reviews

Dinosaurs look awesome

Decent popcorn flick but huge missed opportunity, what's the story.

In 65, astronaut Mills ( Adam Driver ), from the planet Somaris, agrees to a two-year trip through space, since the increased pay will help cover his daughter's medical expenses. Unfortunately, while he's in cryosleep, the ship is pelted with asteroids and forced to make a crash landing. Only Mills and young Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ) survive. But somehow, they've ended up on Earth, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs roamed. Now they must hike 15 kilometers across a deadly landscape to find the only remaining escape pod. And there's another problem: The asteroid that hit their ship was only a small one.

Is It Any Good?

While this sci-fi/dinosaur movie is competently made, it really only has one good idea, and it doesn't do much with it. The rest is generic and familiar and fails to generate much suspense or emotion. The first thing viewers must accept in 65 is that there's another planet that has inhabitants who speak English and act just like Earth humans. After the crash, we get all the usual CGI dinosaur attacks and jump scares -- all very similar to what we've seen before in the many Jurassic Park / World movies. The screenplay -- following a beat-by-beat, three-act formula -- sets up all the elements it's going to use during the final payoff, and it's all noticeable because there's not much else to think about. But perhaps the oddest touch in this movie is the decision to have Koa speak a different language (she's from a different "district" than Mills). This leads to many scenes of Mills trying to force Koa to learn English words -- which she gamely does -- rather than him trying to understand what she's saying. It's all a bit of a drag, like Land of the Lost with the fun taken out. Ultimately, 65 leaves us feeling dino-sore.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about 65 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How does the movie handle the difference in the languages that the characters speak? How does the language barrier affect the story?

How does the movie deal with grief?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : March 10, 2023
  • On DVD or streaming : May 2, 2023
  • Cast : Adam Driver , Ariana Greenblatt , Chloe Coleman
  • Directors : Scott Beck , Bryan Woods
  • Inclusion Information : Female actors
  • Studios : Sony Pictures , Columbia Pictures
  • Genre : Action/Adventure
  • Topics : Dinosaurs
  • Run time : 93 minutes
  • MPAA rating : PG-13
  • MPAA explanation : intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images
  • Last updated : June 18, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Jurassic Park Poster Image

Jurassic Park

Want personalized picks for your kids' age and interests?

Kong: Skull Island

Aliens Poster Image

Jurassic World

Alien Poster Image

Sci-Fi Movies

Science fiction tv, related topics.

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

65 Review: How Is Adam Driver Vs. Dinosaurs This Dull?

It leans more toward “disappointing” than “awful,” but at least “awful” would have made it more interesting..

Adam Driver in 65

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 65 is a film with an excellent high-concept premise and a great deal of on-paper potential. Adam Driver has thoroughly proven himself in the last decade to be one of the better talents of his generation, the filmmakers were the screenwriters of the thrilling and successful A Quiet Place , and the idea of having a humanoid alien who crash lands on Earth 65 million years in the past has a lot of exciting promise. Driver vs. Dinosaurs – how bad could it be? As it turns out, the answer to that question isn’t “it’s really bad” so much as it is “it’s surprisingly boring.”

Adam Driver being approached by a T-Rex in 65

Release Date:  March 10, 2023 Directed By:  Scott Beck and Bryan Woods Written By:  Scott Beck and Bryan Woods Starring:  Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Nika King, and Chloe Coleman Rating:  PG-13, for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images Runtime:  93 minutes

After a clunky, on-screen text-filled opening that sets up the general plot, 65 is never able to move out of neutral and do much with its conceit. Instead of featuring Adam Driver dramatically and creatively fighting for survival and escape while using extraterrestrial technology to fight off our world’s carnivorous, monstrous lizards, the movie settles for developing overused plot devices and character dynamics to unfurl a familiar story with nothing identifiably original to offer audiences.

In 65 , Driver plays Mills, a spaceship pilot from the planet Somaris who agrees to take a two-year long trip across the stars so that he can make enough money to afford treatment for his terminally ill daughter (Chloe Coleman). On the journey back home, the ship Mills is flying encounters a flurry of asteroids that cause it to crash land on an uncharted world. Because the movie can’t find a way to properly communicate the information to movie-goers, a title card delivers the necessary exposition: “65 Million Years Ago, A Visitor Crash Landed On Earth.”

Just as you get excited starting to wonder how the movie is going to narratively function with Mills being all alone on a planet filled with flesh-eating monsters that see him as an exotic meal, the film opts to not even try. It turns out that the protagonist isn’t actually alone, and that there instead is one passenger on the ship whose cryo-pod managed to survive the crash. Mills rescues and wakes up Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), a nine-year-old girl who doesn’t speak the same language as the hero. A la recent shows like The Mandalorian or The Last Of Us or recent movies including James Mangold ’s Logan , George Clooney’s Midnight Sky , and Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho , Miles if forced to become a surrogate parent for the helpless child and do everything he can to shepherd them to safety.

65 is devoid of any exciting, original, or compelling plot points; it’s all by the numbers action.

A high-tech guidance system tells Mills and Koa that a functioning shuttle is on the top of a nearby mountain and can be used to escape the planet – and while there is nothing inherently wrong with the simplicity of that narrative, the problem is that the movie offers nothing to spice things up and make the story compelling beyond the basics of the circumstance. There are moments where they are attacked by dinosaurs and they temporarily get stuck in places, but they are the plot equivalent of speedbumps because there is no effort made to develop more advanced stakes.

You’d think that at the very least alien technology would be able to spice things up a bit, but the movie is unable to strike a balance between implementing cool, futuristic tools and making sure that Mills and Koa always seem desperate and in danger. The most clever usage of anything is using metal marble-like explosives to try and excavate a cave in which the characters are stuck… and even the results of that are underwhelming and undramatic.

Getting excited about dynamic, different dinosaur action in 65 would be a mistake.

With 65 unable to deliver on the more sci-fi side of the story, one would hope it could hit the gas pedal with the dinosaur action, but it’s just another area where the film falls flat. It’s arguably unfair to compare the movie to the high standard that is Jurassic Park , but you’d think that it would take some lessons about what works in that classic and apply them. A big part of the fun in that franchise is seeing the diversity of species and identifying them from memorable fossils seen in natural history museums. Aside from one herbivore that the characters rescue from a tar pit and a few flying dinos that have no significant presence, there are basically just three kinds of dinosaurs: tiny carnivores, medium carnivores, and giant carnivores.

None of them have special qualities that make them stand out; they might as well just be alien lizards with sharp teeth and claws… which kind of defeats the whole point of the film. To the film’s credit, there is one attempt made at trying to add an extra layer of depth to Mills’ conflict with the dinosaurs, with 65 setting up a “rematch” in the third act with what may or may not be a T-Rex from the second act, but the effort is so minimal and ultimately blink-or-miss-it that I wouldn’t be surprised if a large percentage of audiences don’t pick up on it.

If 65 predated the Jurassic World trilogy and Hollywood’s present obsession with the Lone Wolf And Cub dynamic, it would perhaps be seen to have a lot more merit – but as is, it missed its sweet spot release period by a decade, and as such doesn’t have much to offer. It leans more toward “disappointing” than “awful,” but at least “awful” would have made it more interesting.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

Killing Gawker: Everything We Know About Matt Damon And Ben Affleck’s Hulk Hogan Movie

'Bruce Wants To See You In His Trailer': The Intense Exchange Bruce Willis And M. Night Shyamalan Had While Filming The Sixth Sense

90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After's Tell-All Tackled Angela's Cheating Allegations Against Michael, And I See Why This Relationship Didn't Work Out

Most Popular

  • 2 One Piece Creator Shared Shocking Advice For The Anime Remake, But It Actually Has Me Excited
  • 3 Killing Gawker: Everything We Know About Matt Damon And Ben Affleck’s Hulk Hogan Movie
  • 4 Game Of Thrones’ Kit Harington Reveals The ‘Excruciatingly Embarrassing' Fan Encounters His Friends Troll Him Over
  • 5 'Bruce Wants To See You In His Trailer': The Intense Exchange Bruce Willis And M. Night Shyamalan Had While Filming The Sixth Sense

movie reviews 65

65 (United States, 2023)

65 Poster

If all you’re looking for out of a movie is Adam Driver running around in a jungle shooting dinosaurs while protecting a young girl, 65 delivers in spades. If you’re hoping for something more complex, either in terms of character development, background narrative, or world-building, the movie has neither the time nor the patience to accommodate. The dino special effects are adequate for the job (better than in 1993’s Jurassic Park but inferior to those in the third installment of the Jurassic World series ) and Driver appears committed to the work. The running length is a svelte 93 minutes, meaning that 65 isn’t around long enough to wear out its welcome. By keeping its goals limited, it’s able to deliver what it promises, and that stands for something. I’ll admit I was more entertained by this high-concept sci-fi adventure than half the films I have seen thus far in 2023.

In their directorial debut, Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (the writers of A Quiet Place ) keep it simple. The plot could be the template for a video game: get the hero from Point A to Point B without dying. Along the way, there are various impediments that have to be overcome: rockslides, steam geysers, quicksand, and (of) course dinosaurs. 65 mixes in an Aliens - inspired subplot about a lone, grieving adult “adopting” and orphaned young girl. At no point, however, does Adam Driver say to any of the dinosaurs, “Get away from her, you bitch !”

movie reviews 65

One could argue that 65 is real throw-back – all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s, when monster movies could enthrall and amaze. The first two-thirds of King Kong , after all, focused on explorers wandering around a prehistoric jungle and encountering dinosaurs. 65 has all the advantages of modern technology but it’s not significantly more sophisticated than the movies of Willis O’Brien. This is the kind of production that provides a couple of memorable moments (the T-Rex “reveal,” which is spoiled by the trailers, being the most notable) but somehow seems smaller than it should. Maybe that’s because we have been trained to expect that a menagerie like this is appropriate only for epics while the most lofty goal 65 can claim is being a slickly-made B movie.

Comments Add Comment

  • Interstellar (2014)
  • Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
  • Aliens (1986)
  • Howard the Duck (1986)
  • After Earth (2013)
  • Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)
  • Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
  • This Is Where I Leave You (2014)
  • Silence (2016)
  • Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
  • What If (2014)
  • While We're Young (2015)
  • (There are no more better movies of Ariana Greenblatt)
  • Borderlands (2024)
  • Awake (2021)
  • Barbie (2023)
  • Action/Adventure
  • Children's/Family
  • Documentary/Reality
  • Amazon Prime Video

Fun

More From Decider

'WWHL': Bowen Yang Says One Terrible 'SNL' Host Once Made "Multiple Cast Members Cry"

'WWHL': Bowen Yang Says One Terrible 'SNL' Host Once Made "Multiple Cast...

Peacock's Gary Coleman Doc Questions The Late Child Actor's "Suspicious" Death: "His Life Is A Cautionary Tale" 

Peacock's Gary Coleman Doc Questions The Late Child Actor's "Suspicious"...

Where Is Kelly Ripa? 'Live' Co-Host Missing From Today's Episode

Where Is Kelly Ripa? 'Live' Co-Host Missing From Today's Episode

11 Best New Movies on Netflix: August 2024's Freshest Films to Watch

11 Best New Movies on Netflix: August 2024's Freshest Films to Watch

'Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles' Star Josh Flagg Gives Update On His Crumbling Friendship With Josh Altman: "We're Just Not Really Talking"

'Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles' Star Josh Flagg Gives Update On His...

Kora's Scars in the 'Rebel Moon: Director's Cut' Sex Scenes Were Sofia Boutella's Idea: "I Asked Zack If It Would Be OK"

Kora's Scars in the 'Rebel Moon: Director's Cut' Sex Scenes Were Sofia...

11 Best New Shows on Netflix: August 2024's Top Upcoming Series to Watch

11 Best New Shows on Netflix: August 2024's Top Upcoming Series to Watch

'RHONJ' Fans Slam Teresa Giudice's "Cruel" Husband Louie Ruelas For Wishing Suffering On Margaret Josephs' Family: "This Guy Is Literally The Devil"

'RHONJ' Fans Slam Teresa Giudice's "Cruel" Husband Louie Ruelas For...

Share this:.

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to copy URL

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘65’ on Netflix, a Bare-Bones B-Movie in Which Adam Driver Dodges Dinosaurs

Where to stream:.

  • Adam Driver

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ferrari’ on Hulu, Michael Mann’s Portrait of a Competitive and Conflicted Man

Francis ford coppola allegedly tried to kiss female extras on set of ‘megalopolis’ to “get them in the mood”, is ‘megalopolis’ going to be francis ford coppola’s ‘phantom menace’, funny movies on netflix: the top 11 comedy movies on netflix.

Adam Driver headlines 65 (now on Netflix, in addition to streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ), a keep-it-simple-stupid B-movie in which he plays a marooned space traveler who has to fight dinosaurs in order to survive and also keep them from eating the little girl under his protection. Sam Raimi is a credited producer, and A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods direct, so here’s hoping we can squeeze a little fun out of this genre exercise, and it won’t be a dino-bore that just leaves us dino-sore.   

65 : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Subtitle: PRIOR TO THE ADVENT OF MANKIND (pause) IN THE INFINITY OF SPACE (pause)… it goes on like this for a bit, all overdramatic and silly, about how there were ancient civilizations elsewhere in the cosmos, capable of interstellar travel and such. Then we meet Mills (Driver) as he and his wife (Nika King) watch their daughter (Chloe Coleman) play on the beach on their home planet of Not Earth. The girl’s sick. He’s gotta take a two-year space-excursion gig in order to pay for her treatments, proving that even long long ago in a galaxy far far away, health insurance functioned exactly the way it does now, namely, not worth diddley-dick. Mills and his daughter share a moment, and then he’s off.

WHUMP. CLUNK. Those are asteroids hitting the spacecraft. Mills is the guy piloting the ship while the rest of the passengers are in cryostasis. He runs to the control room and grabs the stick as massive chunks of rock smash and bang off the hull, merciless in their destruction. Sleeping people hurtle into the void. “Emergency landing!” says the female robot computer voice, as if we can’t tell from the moving pictures we’re watching that Mills, by taking a hard turn towards a nearby planet, is doing exactly that. It’s a rough one. He’s gotta pull a chunk of shrapnel out of his side and navigate the slimy mudhole he landed in and figure out where the other piece of the ship is and is that a growling creature in the water over there, its spiny back briefly emerging from the muck? Yep. 

Thankfully, he’s got a rifle. He considers pointing it at himself, until he realizes one other person survived the crash, a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), but if you want to call her Newt, that’s fine. He puts her over his shoulder and slogs through the mud and spots a giant reptilian footprint. What planet is this? I’ll give you three guesses, although you’ll only need one. Koa awakens, but she speaks a different language so they can’t understand each other, which is great, because if anything gets in the way of a good B-movie sci-fi survival yarn like this, it’s dialogue. Mills uses his little computer gadget to determine that the piece of the ship with a functioning escape vessel is a goodly hike through the jungle and up a mountain, so off they go. Easier said than done, of course, because between the massive bugs and nasty parasites and hungry toothy dinosaurs, life is really finding its f—ing way on this planet.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: 65 is Jurassic Park meets Aliens with the stripped-down-premise-meets-big-star formula of Idris Elba Fights A Lion With His Damn Bare Hands movie Beast . 

Performance Worth Watching: Like Elba, Driver seems incapable of going through the motions, even in a trivial exercise like this, finding a moment or three of substance for a character who’s otherwise a hasty sketch of a human being. 

Memorable Dialogue: In one of those moments of substance, Driver delivers an earnest line-reading when Mills explains to his daughter why he’s leaving for so long: “It’s not because of you. It’s for you.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: What these Quiet Place guys forgot to add to 65 is an equivalent to the unforgettably intense Emily Blunt Gives Birth In A Bathtub While Being Stalked By Monsters Who Can’t See Her But Can Hear Her scene. It’s the kind of thing that gives a well-trod premise the vitality it needs to be more than just a movie about a dude trying not to get eaten to death. That doesn’t mean 65 is unwatchable though; it’s Just Fine in a way that renders it an acceptable 93 minutes of escapism without making you upset that you wasted your time watching it.

Faint praise, I know, but let’s not damn the movie outright. Beck and Woods stir up a few moments of comedy amidst the grim scenario – Mills gotta distract the girl from the potentially dire prospects of this situation – and layer in some amusingly preposterous coincidence to amplify the stakes. Visually, the film ranges from nifty CGI-action dynamics (smallish dinos attacking from all angles, a scary silhouette of a considerably less-small one) to repetitive (lots of set pieces with our protags clambering over plastic rocks), and doesn’t look too cheap.

But, like, what’s the movie about about? The relationship between Mills and Koa, who reminds him of his daughter, the thought of whom makes him despondent? The classic man-vs.-nature struggle? The idea of holding onto hope in spite of difficult odds? Meh. Nothing really sinks its teeth in deep enough to draw blood, metaphorically speaking, of course. What we do get is plenty of dino spectacle, Driver’s attempt to not brood too hard and the nagging underlying assertion that nobody’d be in this mess if Outer Space Blue Cross would’ve made the Mills family’s deductible more affordable. I couldn’t take another movie in which children suffer while their parents argue about billing codes and out-of-network providers with customer service representatives. I’d take the velociraptors over that any day.

Our Call: 65 isn’t going to leave an indelible impression on anyone, but for an it-is-what-it-is movie, you could do a hell of a lot worse. STREAM IT, but maybe wait til it’s out of the paid-rental tier and hits a streaming service. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

  • Stream It Or Skip It

Does 'Yellowstone' Return Tonight? 'Yellowstone's Season 5, Part 2 Premiere Date, 'The Madison' Spin-off Updates, And More

Does 'Yellowstone' Return Tonight? 'Yellowstone's Season 5, Part 2 Premiere Date, 'The Madison' Spin-off Updates, And More

Where Was Kelly Ripa This Morning On 'Live'?

Where Was Kelly Ripa This Morning On 'Live'?

Where's Kelly Ripa This Week? 'Live' Co-Host's Absence Stretches Into Week Two

Where's Kelly Ripa This Week? 'Live' Co-Host's Absence Stretches Into Week Two

Is 'It Ends With Us' Streaming on Netflix or HBO Max?

Is 'It Ends With Us' Streaming on Netflix or HBO Max?

Where Has Kelly Ripa Been? Why She's Missing On 'Live'

Where Has Kelly Ripa Been? Why She's Missing On 'Live'

Why Is Kelly Ripa Absent From 'Live'?

Why Is Kelly Ripa Absent From 'Live'?

Review: There are ‘65’ million reasons to avoid the new Adam Driver dinosaur space flick

A man in a futuristic outfit holding a gun-like weapon and standing outdoors

  • Copy Link URL Copied!

If you asked the AI program ChatGPT to write a dinosaur/space movie as if Steven Spielberg and James Cameron were trying to make fun of each other, you’d probably still get something more entertaining than the thudding hack job “65,” a movie about as thrilling as watching footage of someone — in this case, Adam Driver and his young co-star, Ariana Greenblatt — on the “Jurassic Park” ride at Universal Studios .

The writers of “A Quiet Place” — Scott Beck and Bryan Woods — are clearly not done with monsters and family and the apocalypse. But this time, as directors too, they’ve decided to take us not forward but back, to when a routine trip went disastrously wrong. Think “Gilligan’s Island.” Not because it’s like “65.” Just because it’s more entertaining than “65.”

For your safety

The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

Do you like introductory text that removes that nagging worry that you won’t be expositionally satisfied? Because “65” has that. “BEFORE THE ADVENT OF MANKIND” reads the first. “IN THE INFINITY OF SPACE” reads the next, which is, by the way, set against the backdrop of … space. Just so everything’s clear! And later, after a sentient audience will have guessed from the huge dinosaur footprint that exploratory mission pilot Mills (Driver) has been stranded on a particular planet at a very particular time, here come the words: “A VISITOR CRASH LANDED ON EARTH.” Yes, that “65” refers to the number of millions of years ago. Not, as one might hope, the number of minutes in the film.

Do you like stories about absent dads? Based on the movies, they seem to be an emotional connection between humanity’s meager time on Earth and social systems in long-ago galaxies. (“ChatGPT, add George Lucas in the mix.”) By taking one more gig, Driver’s character not only leaves behind an adoring wife but, more urgently, an adoring and ailing daughter (Chloe Coleman), whose hologram messages of love, longing and increasing sickness are like stabs to his heart as he’s trying to avoid dinosaur teeth stabbing everywhere else on his body. So, if you wanted to give him only one human companion to heighten that guilty-father feeling, out of all the possible cryogenically frozen passengers to survive an inconvenient ship crash, who would you pick? A grandmother? Wrong! “ChatGPT, are you familiar with ‘The Last of Us ’?”

A man carrying a weapon walks into a cave alongside a young woman

Do you like made-up tongues not translated because it’s cuter when an othered figure learns English? Maybe Beck and Woods just didn’t feel like writing dialogue for the girl, Koa (Greenblatt), that would help establish this child as a person beyond at first seeming like a feral creature and then a surrogate daughter. Dialogue is hard! So instead this poor character gets an untranslated language until she can trigger “aww’s” by learning the words “home” and “family” and, with stick figures, inventing cave art.

Do you think Adam Driver can do anything? He might have thought that too, when signing on for this.

Do you believe that dinosaurs have long since outlived their CGI-rendered ability to instill awe and terror? Because the filmmakers seem pretty convinced 172 “Jurassic Park” movies haven’t already been made. Sometimes that kind of innocence inspires reinvention. Sometimes it just means that once majestic, still mysterious and endlessly fascinating creatures begin to feel like faceless goons in a video game.

Do you occasionally wish that studios would run dank-looking movies that seem stripped of color through a Snapchat-like filter that would add bright, rainbow-hued tails, faces, starbursts, pizzazz-y augmentations and the like? I’m not saying there are quickie backlot black-and-white adventure movies from 90 years ago with more visual breadth, color range and compositional tension than “65,” but, OK, well, yes, I am saying that.

Is “65” a hall-of-fame bad movie? No, and that may be its problem. It’s just pedestrian dumb and dull. It drops humans from eons away and ago into an extinction-level event, and instead of being full-on weird and wondrous about it, prefers to be utterly imitative and complacent. Way to extinguish yourself.

'65'

Rated: PG-13, for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Playing: In general release

More to Read

Chris Nashawaty, author of "The Future Was Now."

The summer of ’82 changed sci-fi cinema forever

July 24, 2024

A woman and a cat on a leash walk in a ruined New York City.

Review: ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ is the rare prequel that outclasses the original for mood

June 28, 2024

A woman and a cabbie have a conversation.

Review: In the underpowered ‘Daddio,’ the proverbial cab ride from hell could use more hell

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni leaning in for a kiss on a couch on a rooftop overlooking a city skyline

Hollywood Inc.

‘It Ends With Us’ movie banned in Qatar for kissing scenes

Aug. 12, 2024

A split image of Blake Lively smiling and holding a microphone, and Ryan Reynolds in costume as Deadpool covering his mouth

Why Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds both can declare box office victory

Aug. 11, 2024

a man on stage standing in front of the 'Incredibles 3' logo

At D23, Disney puts its box office hopes on animated sequels and Baby Yoda

Aug. 10, 2024

Hugh Jackman stars as P.T. Barnum in Twenteith Century Fox's "THE GREATEST SHOWMAN." Credit: Niko Tavernise / Twentieth Century Fox

Disney is developing a ‘Greatest Showman’ stage musical. So tell me, do you wanna go?

Aug. 9, 2024

an image, when javascript is unavailable

‘65’ Is ‘The Last of Us’ With Adam Driver, Dinosaurs, and Zero Thrills

By David Fear

Attention, anyone who’s ever said they’d gladly watch Adam Driver in anything: You’re about to have that statement put to the test.

The “twist” is, Mills has actually landed on Earth during the Cretaceous Period, and those monsters are dinosaurs . The title refers to how many million years ago Mills landed on our big blue marble. It also happens to be a larger number than the amount of minutes it takes for you to completely lose your patience with this mess. Can’t that ominous comet they keep cutting to in the sky — you know the one — come any sooner?

The CIA Sent Him Deep Undercover to Spy on Islamic Radicals. It Cost Him Everything

How do you market a domestic-violence movie not like 'it ends with us', insecure trump lies, claims harris crowd was manipulated with ai, rolling stones background singer chanel haynes on her first tour: 'i was living in my dream', editor’s picks, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history.

The good news is that this is far from an extinction-level event for the A-list talent here; Driver may be forced to push this plodding sci-fi misfire along, but given how he’s survived white supremacists , rebel forces , noble-failure literary adaptations and the sixth season of Girls, he can recover from this. The bad news is that even those of us who love the actor’s work may find ourselves wondering why he said yes to this in the first place. Put it you this way: This is a movie in which Adam Driver , Movie Star, fights a bunch of dinosaurs. And long before the film’s abrupt excuse for an ending drops, you will find yourself rooting for the dinosaurs.

Julie Bowen Stars as Demon-Haunted Housewife in 'Hysteria'

  • Hell of a Town
  • By Kalia Richardson

Lisa Cried When She Landed Her Debut Acting Role in 'The White Lotus' Season 3

  • Dream Come True
  • By Larisha Paul

'Squid Game' Season 2 Teaser Reveals Player 456's Return to the Deadly Game

  • Let's Play

Four-Time Oscars Host Jimmy Kimmel Won't Return in 2025: It Became 'Too Much' to Balance

Racing golf carts and talking hollywood with seth rogen and evan goldberg.

  • Superbadass(es)
  • By Miles Klee

Most Popular

Sally field reveals robin williams changed 'mrs. doubtfire' filming order so she could leave set after her father died: 'he was very sensitive and intuitive', taylor swift instagram post sparks kamala harris endorsement speculation, florida lawyer blows up communist statues, egypt's new mega-mummy museum, london's national gallery revamp, and more: morning links for august 6, 2024, kate middleton & prince william’s surprise appearance shows william’s drastic hair transformation, you might also like, ‘the braxtons’ family returns to we tv in new series, despite their previous clash over ‘braxton family values’ pay, in the face of luxury slowdown, copenhagen fashion week brands plow on, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, ‘the emoji movie,’ remembered as one of the worst animated films ever made, is now #1 on netflix, kevin durant becomes psg limited partner through arctos.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

'65' Review: Adam Driver Can Save You From Dinosaurs, But Not This Disaster of a Movie

4

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

There is something remarkable about how completely 65 wastes all it had going for it. Taking Adam Driver , one of the best actors working today, and throwing him onto a prehistoric Earth where he has to fight dinosaurs seems like it could be a solid little action flick. Whoever it was that edited the film’s trailer together should be given a raise, as it made it seem like the final product might actually be a thrilling science fiction ride that could possibly even bring some notes of horror. Instead, what we got is a poorly constructed work doomed by its derivative and dull narrative core.

Though it is aggressively simple, 65 manages to become as lost as its characters as they wander through fields, woods, and caves without any momentum behind them. There are occasional glimpses of the fun that could have been had and Driver is never phoning it in, even as he has basically nothing to work with. The trouble is that it can’t overcome what proves to be an unimaginative experience that is further hampered by poor direction, writing, effects, and everything a film needs to hold together.

This all begins with on-screen text informing us of the necessary information to understand that our humanoid protagonist Mills (Driver) is actually part of an entirely different species than our own. Living on a planet that is far from Earth, he is about to take on a job that will whisk him away from his family for two years. As he prepares to say goodbye to his wife and daughter, who is in poor health of some kind, we learn he is doing this so that they can afford proper treatment. The fact that this species with the capacity to travel through space is still one where healthcare is not accessible to all is a grim prospect, but there is no interest in exploring this as it is all about getting the story in motion. Even then, it feels like it is stalling.

65-adam-driver-ariana-greenblatt-2

RELATED: The 10 Best Adam Driver Performances, Ranked

While 65 was never going to be a particularly heady work of science fiction, both the narrative underpinnings and their execution are so empty that everything increasingly rings hollow even as it incessantly hammers home the same superficial elements. The inciting incident is that the ship that Mills is piloting flies straight into an asteroid field. This happens while he is asleep, and they subsequently crash down to Earth, their ship breaking into two parts. The only other surviving passenger of the many in cryosleep is the young Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ), who Mills must then protect as they travel to the other part of the ship they hope to use to escape.

A narrative built around traveling from point A to point B could work to keep the emphasis on the action. After all, the selling point of the experience is getting to see Driver take on various dinos. Much like the recent Jurassic World sequel, that is not something that 65 sufficiently capitalizes on. Further, the déjà vu that is felt when it too becomes oddly fixated on bugs does it absolutely no favors. What should have been a stripped-down story is made into an overwrought and ambling film where the staging of the action ensures that it only rarely carries any actual weight.

From the first moment Mills encounters one of his few dinosaur foes as he goes out to get his bearings, the effects are painfully unconvincing no matter how much Driver dutifully rolls around. This becomes a persistent problem that the film will occasionally get around by using darkness as a cover, but that can only go so far. They are often bigger than the dinosaurs in something like Jurassic Park , but the way it integrates them into the story just falls flat. Those effects have aged better because they aren’t just built around throwing a lot at the screen, but about being more precise in how they are used. The longer that 65 drags on, the more it reveals it lacks anything approaching a creative vision.

65-adam-driver-1

Take when Mills and Koa are attacked under a tree, the first truly dangerous encounter the two have. Rather than feel tense, they just seem disconnected from the supposedly approaching creatures. We know from the cutting back and forth that they are getting closer, though we are never given a shot to establish the distance that is being closed. It leans on the committed performance of Driver to convey the character’s panic, but we never feel it in the way the scene is constructed. Not once do you ever think that either of them are in any real danger, no matter how much the film tries to insist that they are. Whenever they are just on the verge of being in actual trouble, they get saved at the last possible second. It robs the film of any sense of stakes, making it hard to actually care about any of the subsequent escalations it throws out. Making matters worse is that the back-and-forth the characters have is all painfully one-note. Much of this stems from how Koa speaks a language that Mills does not understand, essentially reducing her to being a surrogate daughter with no depth that she gets on her own. Greenblatt gives it her all, but she is fighting an uphill battle from start to finish.

All of this could be forgiven if the film were actually fun in how it played around with its premise. It was never going to be a masterpiece by any means, but it is bizarre just how boring it all feels. The main event of it all, Driver fighting a T-rex, is something the film teases for all its worth before it unfolds in the conclusion. This proves to be disappointing as, after all this wait, the sequence just doesn’t feel worth it and passes rather quickly. Once more, the persistent problem is how disconnected the two adversaries are and how poorly staged the entire thing remains. When you then look back on the entire experience, it is fascinating how fleeting it is and how little of an impact it all leaves. Though there are movies that are worse than 65 , it is part of a select few that manage to utterly and completely squander their own potential.

65 is in theaters now.

65 Movie Poster

65 is an action/adventure sci-fi movie from writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. When pilot Mills (Adam Driver) crashes on a mysterious planet, his early investigations immediately reveal to him its not where he is, it's when. Realizing he's stuck on earth 65,000,000 years in the past, he happens upon a young girl survivor named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) and takes her with him. To survive, the two face off against prehistoric dangers, such as ancient terrain and dinosaurs, as they use Mills' limited tools and whatever they can find to make it back to the future.

  • Movie Reviews
  • Adam Driver
  • Science Fiction

65 - Everything You Need To Know

Adam Driver shocked

There's one thing everyone agrees on — dinosaurs are awesome . Who doesn't love a big, scaly, prehistoric beast? But for all the love these terrible lizards get, there aren't a whole lot of dinosaur movies. Sure, they've popped up here and there, showing up in Hollywood classics like "King Kong" and bizarre curios like "Tammy and the T-Rex." However, in recent years, the dinosaur market has been almost exclusively cornered by the "Jurassic Park" series, but a challenger to the dino throne emerged on March 10, 2023.

That's when "65" hit theaters, offering audiences a new take on these oversized reptiles. In a world of ever-growing IP, remakes, and reboots, this sci-fi flick offered a fresh take on an old concept, with some serious talent working both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. But if you've got questions about this Cretaceous caper, we've got answers. From what critics think about the flick to who wrote and directed this clash of man and monsters, read on for everything you need to know about "65."

What is the plot of 65?

Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt scared

With his daughter dying of an illness, Commander Mills decides to leave his home planet and take a two-year journey into space in the hopes of earning enough money to save his kid's life. Unfortunately, the ship he's piloting — which is full of cryo-sleeping passengers — accidentally hits an asteroid and crash-lands on a strange planet. In the wreckage, he manages to find one survivor, a young girl named Koa, and together, they're forced to survive in this alien world.

Of course, while it might be alien to Mills, it's not alien to us. As it turns out, this is Earth ... 65 million years ago. And yes, that means things get incredibly complicated for our heroes when hungry dinosaurs arrive on the scene. It also doesn't help that they've landed on Earth at a very, um, impactful point in history. With the clock ticking and the dinosaurs closing in, Mills and Koa have just one chance to escape, and they'll have to make a dangerous journey if they want to get off this rock alive.

Who stars in 65?

Ariana Greenblatt scared

Co-starring alongside a bunch of toothy reptiles,  we've got Adam Driver — a man who's no stranger to sci-fi. After playing in the acclaimed HBO series "Girls," Driver found worldwide stardom in the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy, portraying the tortured Kylo Ren, a man torn between the light and the dark side of the Force. In addition to wielding a lightsaber onscreen, Driver has also starred in projects like "Marriage Story," "The Last Duel," and "House of Gucci." In "65," he's playing the part of Commander Mills, who must protect a young girl in a world full of flesh-hungry reptiles.

So who portrays his young ward? Well, the part of Koa is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who's no stranger to surviving perilous situations. The young actress stole the show in "Love & Monsters" as Minnow, a young girl who can more than handle herself in a world full of massive mutant creatures. You'll also recognize Greenblatt as young Gamora from "Avengers: Infinity War," Daphne Diaz from "Stuck in the Middle," and the voice of Tabitha from the "Boss Baby" franchise.

Driver and Greenblatt are also joined by Chloe Coleman, who starred alongside Dave Bautista in the family flick "My Spy," Karen Gillan in the action thriller "Gunpowder Milkshake," and both Owen Wilson and Jennifer Lopez in "Marry Me." Rounding out the cast, "65" also features Nika King, who's most famous for playing Zendaya's mother, Leslie Bennett, in HBO's "Euphoria."

Who wrote and directed 65?

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods smiling

If you don't already know the names Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, you should probably memorize them real quick. It seems these two are becoming real-deal power players in Hollywood, especially when it comes to sci-fi and horror films. This dynamic duo is responsible for writing and directing "65," but before that, they were busy collaborating on films like 2019's "Haunt" (a slasher flick set in a haunted house) and 2015's "Nightlight" (a supernatural set-in-the-woods thriller). However, they really punched their ticket to success by writing one of the most dynamic genre scripts in recent memory: "A Quiet Place." They're also responsible for the adaptation of Stephen King's "The Boogeyman," so one thing is for sure about these two — they know how to bring some serious thrills.

Who produced 65?

Sam Raimi smiling

Before turning their attention to Adam Driver's dino adventure, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods were hired to work on Quibi's (remember Quibi?) horror anthology series "50 States of Fright." However, they weren't alone on the project, and one of their fellow "50 States" collaborators joined "65" and gave the film some serious cred.

Alongside Deborah Liebling and Zainab Azizi, the legendary Sam Raimi  served as a producer on "65." If you're at all familiar with horror movies or superhero flicks, then Raimi needs no introduction. He burst onto the scene with the "Evil Dead" franchise and helped lay out the blueprint for future Marvel flicks by helming the three Tobey Maguire "Spider-Man" movies. In addition to directing films like "Drag Me to Hell," "The Quick and the Dead," and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," Raimi has produced quite a few winners, including "Crawl," "Nightbooks," "Don't Breathe," and "30 Days of Night." 

How did critics and audiences respond to 65?

Adam Driver worried

The premise of "65" sounds awesome — humans crash-land on Earth and have to fight dinosaurs. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like critics were impressed by what "65" had to offer, with most of them wishing the film would just go extinct. The film currently has a terrible 37% critics' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 78 reviews.

Our own Reuben Baron wasn't thrilled with the movie , writing, "'65' is dreadfully uncreative beyond the basic premise, utilizing cliched character types we've seen handled way more compellingly nearly everywhere else." David Fear of Rolling Stone agreed that "65" was majorly lacking, saying, "It's not schlocky enough to be so-bad-it's-good and nowhere near good enough to be taken even a tiny bit seriously."

Audiences, on the other hand, are a little more fond of the dinosaurian adventure. At the time of this writing, the film has a 63% approval rating based on 500+ reviews. Perhaps their feelings are best summed up by critic Maria Lattila of WhyNow, who wrote, "Is '65' good? Debatable. Is '65' enjoyable? Absolutely. The middle-budget film has disappeared, but '65' is an ambitious, entertaining example of why it should be returned."

How did 65 perform at the box office?

Adam Driver in woods

While average moviegoers on Rotten Tomatoes seem to like "65," its audience approval score of 63% doesn't line up with the box office numbers. On its opening weekend, the dinosaur sci-fi film earned just $12.3 million at the domestic box office. If we add in the international profits, that brings us to a total of $20 million — not great when your reported production budget is $44.5 million.

So why the massive flop? It could be partly thanks to the negative critical reviews. The film was also fighting some serious competition. It opened against "Scream 6," which took the #1 spot at the box office. Plus, there was leftover competition from the weekend before with "Creed III," which punched its way to the #2 spot, leaving "65" in third. In other words, it was a dino-sorry opening weekend.

What is 65 rated?

Adam Driver in woods

As is par for the course with most sci-fi blockbusters, "65" is rated PG-13. If you're worried about little ones, there's no sex or nudity, and the language here is about what you'd expect from a more serious Marvel movie. "65" earns its PG-13 largely thanks to the dinosaurs, which are pretty scary and very hungry. There's quite a bit of blood (but not excessive), plenty of attacks by those terrible lizards, and more than a few wounds earned in battle. Our hero has to get pretty violent to fight off these creatures, but honestly, nothing ever strays into R-rated territory.

movie reviews 65

IMDb Charts

Imdb top 250 movies.

Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

1. The Shawshank Redemption

Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972)

2. The Godfather

Christian Bale in The Dark Knight (2008)

3. The Dark Knight

Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II (1974)

4. The Godfather Part II

Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Edward Binns, John Fiedler, E.G. Marshall, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, Jack Warden, and Robert Webber in 12 Angry Men (1957)

5. 12 Angry Men

Schindler's List (1993)

6. Schindler's List

Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, and Andy Serkis in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

7. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction (1994)

8. Pulp Fiction

Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, and John Rhys-Davies in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

10. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (1994)

11. Forrest Gump

Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, Christopher Lee, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Miranda Otto, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, and Andy Serkis in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

12. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in Fight Club (1999)

13. Fight Club

Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Elliot Page, Ken Watanabe, and Dileep Rao in Inception (2010)

14. Inception

Harrison Ford, Anthony Daniels, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

15. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Joe Pantoliano, and Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix (1999)

16. The Matrix

Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci in Goodfellas (1990)

17. Goodfellas

Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

18. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar (2014)

19. Interstellar

Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman in Se7en (1995)

21. It's a Wonderful Life

Seven Samurai (1954)

22. Seven Samurai

Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

23. The Silence of the Lambs

Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, and Edward Burns in Saving Private Ryan (1998)

24. Saving Private Ryan

Inhabitants of Belo Vale Boa Morte and Cidade de Congonhas and Paige Ellens in City of God (2002)

25. City of God

The Top Rated Movie list only includes feature films.

  • Shorts, TV movies, and documentaries are not included
  • The list is ranked by a formula which includes the number of ratings each movie received from users, and value of ratings received from regular users
  • To be included on the list, a movie must receive ratings from at least 25000 users

Recently viewed

movie reviews 65

movie reviews 65

  • Movies & TV
  • Featured Categories
  • Action & Adventure

Sorry, there was a problem.

Image unavailable.

PARAMOUNT SCARES - Volume 2 [4K UHD + Digital Copy]

  • Sorry, this item is not available in
  • Image not available
  • To view this video download Flash Player

movie reviews 65

PARAMOUNT SCARES - Volume 2 [4K UHD + Digital Copy]

  • Blu-ray from $78.99
Additional Blu-ray, 4K, Digital_copy, Subtitled options Edition Discs New from Used from

October 1, 2024
Genre Horror, Drama, Thriller, Crime, Action & Adventure
Format Subtitled, Digital_copy, 4K
Contributor Stuart Charno, Kirsten Baker, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr, Brian Cox
Language English
Number Of Discs 8

Product Description

Paramount Scares resurrects four spine-chilling terrors in 4K Ultra-HD, for this limited-edition second collection of scream greats, including Jason’s bloody return in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981), the backroad terror of BREAKDOWN (1997), the action-packed zombie pandemic WORLD WAR Z (2013), and Esther’s twisted original evil deeds in ORPHAN: FIRST KILL (2022). This highly collectible box contains each movie in separate amaray cases, with exclusive slipcovers. Also available only in this set—four unique iron-on patches, a glow-in-the-dark enamel pin, a domed logo sticker, and a poster designed by Orlando Arocena. Take a deeper dive into all four films with a curated FANGORIA issue, with articles from their vault and new content. Digital copies of all four movies are also included, to keep the creepy close at hand!

Product details

  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
  • Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 5.25 x 0.5 inches; 14.08 ounces
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ Subtitled, Digital_copy, 4K
  • Run time ‏ : ‎ 9 hours and 37 minutes
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2024
  • Actors ‏ : ‎ Kirsten Baker, Stuart Charno, Brian Cox, Robert Downey Jr, Anthony Edwards
  • Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ French
  • Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ French
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ PARAMOUNT
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0DB7HH65N
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 8
  • #37 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
  • #48 in Horror (Movies & TV)
  • #83 in Drama Blu-ray Discs

Videos for this product

Video Widget Card

Click to play video

Video Widget Video Title Section

Paramount Scares Vol 2 Announcement

BobsMovieReview

movie reviews 65

Customer reviews

  • 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
  • 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
  • 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
  • 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
  • 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

No customer reviews

  • About Amazon
  • Investor Relations
  • Amazon Devices
  • Amazon Science
  • Sell products on Amazon
  • Sell on Amazon Business
  • Sell apps on Amazon
  • Become an Affiliate
  • Advertise Your Products
  • Self-Publish with Us
  • Host an Amazon Hub
  • › See More Make Money with Us
  • Amazon Business Card
  • Shop with Points
  • Reload Your Balance
  • Amazon Currency Converter
  • Amazon and COVID-19
  • Your Account
  • Your Orders
  • Shipping Rates & Policies
  • Returns & Replacements
  • Manage Your Content and Devices
 
 
 
   
  • Conditions of Use
  • Privacy Notice
  • Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
  • Your Ads Privacy Choices

movie reviews 65

IMAGES

  1. 65 movie review & film summary (2023)

    movie reviews 65

  2. 65 movie review & film summary (2023)

    movie reviews 65

  3. 65 (English) Movie: Review

    movie reviews 65

  4. 65 (2023)

    movie reviews 65

  5. ’65’ Review: Adam Driver Can’t Save You From This Disaster

    movie reviews 65

  6. 65: Exclusive Movie Clip

    movie reviews 65

COMMENTS

  1. 65 movie review & film summary (2023)

    You'd think a movie in which Adam Driver fights a bunch of dinosaurs couldn't possibly be boring, but that's exactly what "65" is.. This is a movie that would have benefitted from being a whole lot stupider. The big-budget sci-fi flick—which reportedly cost $91 million to make and was featured in a Super Bowl ad—should have embraced its inherent B-movie roots.

  2. 65

    Alex Parra Fun and thrilling, Adam Driver helps elevate the weak script. Soild Action B movie! Rated 3.5/5 Stars • Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 07/26/23 Full Review Ricky Dumb as a rock but somewhat ...

  3. '65' Review: What on Earth?

    Watch on. I don't mean the movie; that would be unkind. "65," directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (two writers of the first "Quiet Place" film), is not interesting enough to be truly ...

  4. 65

    65 Reviews. Writers and directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods put a lot on the film's shoulders. They got butts in the theater with the sci fi action premise, but the heart of the film is a thin ...

  5. 65 (2023)

    65 (2023) is a movie that my wife and I saw in theaters this evening. The storyline follows a pilot on a research voyage whose ship runs into an unforeseen asteroid belt and crashes on Earth 65 million years ago. Most of the crew doesn't survive the crash except one little girl who doesn't speak English.

  6. '65' Review: Adam Driver Battles Dinosaurs in Derivative Thriller

    Read More About: 65, Adam Driver, Scott Beck Bryan Woods. '65' Review: Adam Driver Battles Dinosaurs and Other Stone-Age Story Ideas in Derivative Thriller. Reviewed at Thalberg Screening Room ...

  7. 65 (2023)

    65: Directed by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods. With Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King. An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone.

  8. 65 Review

    65 Review Adam Driver shoots a bunch of dinosaurs like any good father would. ... 65 Movie Photos. 8 Images. Verdict. 65 is a capable action-thriller with a softer side when it comes to its family ...

  9. 65

    Mixed or Average Based on 27 Critic Reviews. 40. 11% Positive 3 Reviews. 59% Mixed 16 Reviews. 30% Negative 8 Reviews. All Reviews ... for sure, but some terrific GGI monsters, swampy scares and Driver's committed performance make 65 a snap-toothed popcorn multiplex movie which, at 93 minutes, is sprightly in comparison with its lumbering ...

  10. 65 Review

    65 Review. After an asteroid collision, astronaut Mills (Adam Driver) crash lands on Earth — 65 million years ago. Together with the only other survivor, a young girl named Koa (Greenblatt ...

  11. '65' Review: Adam Driver vs. Dinosaurs in Underwhelming Sci-Fi

    65. The Bottom Line A middling throwback creature feature. Release date: Friday, March 10. Cast: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King. Directors-screenwriters: Scott Beck ...

  12. 65 review: a simple, bare-bones sci-fi thriller

    A lean 93-minute runtime. Several intense, clever action sequences. Cons. A messy, unpolished visual style. An overly familiar story. The new movie 65 is a refreshingly unambitious sci-fi ...

  13. 65 Movie Review

    Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills (Adam Driver) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt).Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's splattering dinosaur blood/gore, and Mills pulls a shard of metal out of his own bloody wound.

  14. 65 Review: How Is Adam Driver Vs. Dinosaurs This Dull?

    65. (Image credit: Sony Pictures) Release Date: March 10, 2023 Directed By: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods Written By: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods Starring: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Nika King ...

  15. 65 (film)

    65 is a 2023 American science fiction film written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, ... 2023. It grossed $60 million worldwide on a budget of $45 million, and received mixed reviews from critics. Plot. Sixty-five million years ago, on the planet Somaris, pilot Mills is convinced by his wife that he should take on a two-year space ...

  16. 65

    65 's perspective is interesting as it presents a visitation by human aliens to the last hours of the Cretaceous Period. One of the film's small pleasures is the way it presents a porthole into the world of the dinosaurs on the final day of their existence. The movie ends with The Big One colliding with the planet but we're given plenty ...

  17. Adam Driver '65' Netflix Streaming Movie Review: Stream It or Skip It?

    65. Adam Driver headlines 65 (now on Netflix, in addition to streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ), a keep-it-simple-stupid B-movie in which he plays a marooned space traveler who ...

  18. '65' review: Not hall-of-fame bad, just dumb and dull

    Review: There are '65' million reasons to avoid the new Adam Driver dinosaur space flick. Adam Driver in the movie "65.". If you asked the AI program ChatGPT to write a dinosaur/space ...

  19. '65' Is 'The Last of Us' With Adam Driver, Dinosaurs, and Zero Thrills

    movie review '65' Is 'The Last of Us' With Adam Driver, Dinosaurs, and Zero Thrills Not even this movie star's broad shoulders can carry this curiously inept excuse for a high-concept ...

  20. Adam Driver gets a weak taste of dino might in the sci-fi thriller '65

    CNN —. Adam Driver has his fans, but he seems determined to test their loyalty with some of his recent film choices, the sci-fi thriller "65" being the latest among them. Although the title ...

  21. '65' Review: Adam Driver Can't Save You From This Disaster

    65. 2 10. 65 is an action/adventure sci-fi movie from writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. When pilot Mills (Adam Driver) crashes on a mysterious planet, his early investigations ...

  22. 65 (2023) Movie Reviews

    Buy movie tickets in advance, find movie times, watch trailers, read movie reviews, and more at Fandango. ... 65 (2023) Fan Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. ...

  23. 65

    As is par for the course with most sci-fi blockbusters, "65" is rated PG-13. If you're worried about little ones, there's no sex or nudity, and the language here is about what you'd expect from a ...

  24. IMDb Top 250 Movies

    The Top Rated Movie list only includes feature films. Shorts, TV movies, and documentaries are not included; The list is ranked by a formula which includes the number of ratings each movie received from users, and value of ratings received from regular users; To be included on the list, a movie must receive ratings from at least 25000 users

  25. PARAMOUNT SCARES

    How customer reviews and ratings work Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don't use a simple average.