Jurassic Park, look out! You’ve got some competition with this new dinosaur sci-fi thriller!
All joking aside, I was very impressed with this film. I felt that the premise was very clever in that the directors were introducing us to a world that we are all very familiar and not familiar with at the same time; our planet Earth, 65 million years ago. The main character of this film, Mills (played by Adam Driver), is a humanoid pilot whose ship is shot down by an uncharted asteroid field, which ultimately becomes the main villain of this story as Mills unfortunately crashed on earth a few days before the dinosaurs met their doom in a blaze of fire, ash, and darkness.
What’s great about this film is not just the character development between Mills and Koa (a young passenger on board his ship played by Ariana Greenblatt), the CGI, or the story line. All of these elements were fantastic, but the real star was the music score of this film. With Chris Bacon at the helm as well as Danny Elfman and Gad Emile Zeitune, this score brought forth all the must haves of a good thriller. Now, I have to admit, it’s not that hard to scare me. I jump quite easily and I’ve only watched one horror film in my life. 65 is NOT a horror film, it’s a sci-fi thriller, and yet I must have been jump scared at least fifteen times during the movie. I’ve never been so exhausted from going to the theater. The way that the music score was constructed was just masterful at building up anticipation and then releasing it at the most unexpected times. I’ve noticed that thrillers sometimes have a tendency to rely on the music score too much, so much so that the tremoring of an orchestra is all you can focus on during a scene as you watch a character breath heavily and wide-eyed for what seems like eternity until the scare finally happens. 65 is not one of those films. The music is a valuable aid, but not the main focal point. The characters, scenery, and music work in harmony to create these suspenseful moments. You aren’t waiting for a scare, the scare takes you by surprise.
65 is a very well done film and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s a fan of dinosaurs, wholesome father-daughter relationships, or a good old jump scare!
