65 wants to be a disaster movie, a survival thriller, and a dinosaur epic all at once. It fails at all three. The 2023 film, directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods from their own script, follows a space pilot named Mills (Adam Driver) who crash-lands on Earth 65 million years ago with a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). Their goal: reach a working escape shuttle before an asteroid destroys the planet. The setup is simple. The execution is not.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Mills and Koa
Driver plays Mills as a man who has lost everything. His wife convinced him to take a two-year space expedition to earn money for his ill daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman). When his ship, the Zoic, crashes on Earth, Mills discovers his passengers are dead. He nearly kills himself until he finds Koa, the sole survivor. The chemistry between Driver and Greenblatt is the film’s best asset. Their bond grows through shared hardship, and their scenes together carry moments of genuine tenderness amid the chaos.
But the film buries that connection under relentless action. Mills and Koa spend most of their runtime running from predators, fighting dinosaurs, and dodging rocks. The pacing is frantic, and the script never lets them breathe. The result is a protagonist who feels more like a machine than a person.
The Dinosaur Menace
Earth is overrun by dinosaurs. The film introduces a pack of theropods that slaughter a small armored dinosaur stuck in a tar pit. Later, a large archosaur attacks Mills and Koa in a cave, and Mills shoots it in the eye to hold it off. Then there is the dromaeosaur that attacks Koa, which she traps under a fallen tree and kills with bombs Mills gave her. And the Oviraptor that Mills slaughters before escaping the cave.
The creatures look impressive. The practical effects, particularly the dinosaurs, are the film’s strongest technical achievement. But the film never explains why these animals behave the way they do. They attack without warning, and their aggression feels random rather than driven by instinct or hunger. This makes the danger feel less like a threat and more like a chore.
The Escape Shuttle
The Zoic’s escape shuttle is the film’s central object. It landed on top of a mountain 15 kilometers away, and Mills and Koa must reach it to survive. The distance is a problem. The film compresses the journey into a handful of scenes, skipping over days of travel to keep the tension high. This compression comes at a cost. It removes the sense of scale that should make the journey feel impossible.
The shuttle itself is a mystery box. We learn early that it landed intact, but the film never shows us how Mills found it or what it contains. The lack of information makes the final act feel hollow. The audience has invested hours in the journey, and the payoff is a brief shot of the shuttle lifting off. That anticlimax is the film’s biggest failure.
Language Barriers and the Translator
Mills and Koa speak different languages, and their communication is hindered by a faulty translator. This creates some early humor, as Mills struggles to explain concepts to Koa that she has never encountered. The device breaks early in the film, and from that moment on, the characters rely on gestures and makeshift signals. The film treats this as a minor inconvenience rather than a fundamental obstacle.
The translator’s failure is telling. It represents the film’s approach to storytelling. The script prefers spectacle over subtlety, and it discards any element that slows down the action. That choice is the difference between a good disaster movie and a forgettable one.
The Tar Pit Rescue
One scene stands out for its sheer absurdity. Mills and Koa rescue a small armored dinosaur stuck in a tar pit. A pack of theropods then attacks the pair, and Mills fights them off. The sequence is chaotic and visually striking, but it raises a question: why did they save the dinosaur in the first place? The film never answers. The dinosaur is a burden, a liability, and yet the characters treat it as a companion.
The scene is emblematic of the film’s larger problem. It is full of energy but lacking in purpose. The theropod attack is intense, but it serves no narrative function beyond providing a reason for Mills to fight. The dinosaur’s fate is left unresolved, and the audience is left wondering why anyone cared about it in the first place.
The Cave System
Mills and Koa spend a significant amount of time in caves during their journey. In one sequence, they enter a narrow shaft and a rockfall separates them. Mills is trapped inside the cave, while Koa falls outside the cave system into the open jungle. She is attacked by a dromaeosaur, which she kills with the bombs Mills gave her. Mills slaughters an Oviraptor that attacks him before escaping the cave, but he falls into quicksand while searching for Koa. She rescues him, and they continue up the mountain.
These sequences are tense, but they are also repetitive. The film repeats the same pattern again and again: a predator attacks, Mills or Koa fights back, and they barely escape. The repetition drains the tension. By the final act, the audience stops caring about whether Mills and Koa survive. The film has spent so long making them run that the payoff feels earned.
The Final Act
The film’s climax is a disaster movie staple: the asteroid approaches, the shuttle lifts off, and Mills and Koa escape just in time. The sequence is well-choreographed, with the asteroid visible in the sky as Mills and Koa sprint toward the shuttle. The sound design is effective, and the visuals are spectacular. But the emotional payoff is weak. The film has spent so much time building tension that the release feels anti-climactic.
The ending is abrupt. The asteroid hits, the dust settles, and the screen goes black. There is no epilogue, no reflection, no resolution. The film simply ends. This is a missed opportunity. A disaster movie earns its ending by showing the aftermath, by showing what the characters have lost. 65 offers none of that.
“When past meets future.”
That tagline sums up the film’s ambition. It wants to bridge two eras, to show how the past shapes the future. But the execution fails to deliver on that promise. The dinosaurs are impressive, the action is frantic, but the story is thin. The film never explores what it means for a space pilot to crash on a prehistoric world. It never asks what Mills learns from Koa, or what Koa learns from Mills. The relationship is established, but it is never deepened.
The Verdict
65 is a technically proficient disaster movie that fails to be emotionally compelling. The dinosaurs are the film’s strongest feature, but they are not enough to carry the weight of the story. The film’s pacing is relentless, and its refusal to slow down undermines its own tension. The final act is a letdown, and the ending is abrupt.
The film’s strengths are its visual effects and its central relationship. Its weaknesses are its thin script, its repetitive action, and its lack of emotional payoff. It is a film that knows how to blow things up but not how to build a story around them.
The film’s reception reflects this split. It grossed $60 million worldwide on a budget of $45 million, and it received mixed reviews from critics. The numbers are modest, and the critical response was lukewarm. This is a film that will be forgotten quickly.
65 is a film that is easy to watch but hard to recommend. It is a competent disaster movie with a great premise and a weak execution. The dinosaurs are impressive, but the story is thin. The action is frantic, but the stakes are unclear. The film never finds its footing, and it never delivers on its promise.
The film’s final score is 4.0/10.
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