“I’ve crash-landed on an uncharted celestial body,” Adam Driver, as captain Mills, intones in the opening minutes of 65, the new sci-fi action-adventure thriller from the writers of A Quiet Place. “I don’t know where we are.”
Or perhaps the word should be “when”: 65, that is, meaning 65 million years ago.
Driver, last seen piloting a suburban station wagon through the airborne toxic event haunting the world of White Noise, stars here as captain of a spaceship from the planet Somaris that crashes into extremely ancient Earth. It’s been more than a year since he’s seen his wife and his daughter. His only surviving passenger? An orphaned young girl, Koa, from the upper territories, who’s just emerged from a cryogenic chamber. (She is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who is making waves elsewhere this summer in Barbie.) Neither speak the same language, but it’s clear that the only way to survive will be to find their way out. Amid showers of asteroids and falling rock, they battle dinosaurs and quicksand in search of their last hope for escape.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (both among the writers of postapocalyptic thriller A Quiet Place) team up with legendary filmmaker Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man) for their directorial debut: a sci-fi action thriller with nods to The Last of Us and Jurassic Park and, below the surface, an emotional backstory with echoes of Station Eleven.
Stream it now.
Mills, an astronaut living on the planet Somaris, makes the tough decision to undergo a two-year space exploratory expedition. While the mission will take him away from his wife, Alya and daughter Nevine, he has little choice. His situation is unfortunately relatable: In the midst of a health care crisis, the job promises him enough money to be able to pay to treat Nevine’s life-threatening illness.
Trouble is, the spaceship runs aground before he can make it back to his family. Blasting past asteroids, Mills has met his match, crashing on a strange planet that he doesn’t know is actually Earth — only, it’s Earth 65 million years ago. Quicksand threatens to swallow up anyone who is passing through and T. rexes roam the alternately harsh and beautiful landscape. The cryogenic chambers that Mills’ ship were transporting are all lost, along with the passengers inside of them — all but one, a girl apparently close to the age of Nevine. Koa, he learns, is her name and though she doesn’t speak English, he must urgently make her understand that they’re not safe here. The ship’s escape chamber is up high on a mountain and it’s their only hope for survival. There’s no time to waste.
No, 65 is not based on a book.
Perhaps the question is not so much where, but when. The story takes place 65 million years ago — hence the title — on very ancient Earth.
Location filming for 65 took place primarily in the vicinity of New Orleans, as well as in Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana’s only national forest, in the winter of 2020 and 2021. Kisatchie was chosen by the filmmakers because of its varied topography, including hills and dense forest.
