I hadn't heard of this or seen the trailer, but there was nothing else interesting showing at the cinema so we gave it a shot. From the poster it looked like something about surviving on prehistoric Earth; I assumed it involved time-travel in some way. For some reason I was expected something like a reversed Planet of the Apes. But other than that I knew nothing going in.Most of the run time does indeed center around "surviving on prehistoric Earth". The story focuses on two strangers forming a connection while struggling to overcome the dangers of a wilderness filled with vicious predatory dinosaurs. On paper, that sounds like something I would probably like.
Unfortunately I wasn't really happy with the movie by the end. Sure, it did a lot of things right, but there was so much in it that just felt too contrived or unrealistic to me. A lot of it just felt forced. It seemed too sensationalist to me, trying to milk as much drama out of the setup as possible, where a more grounded approach would have worked better for me.
It might sound strange, but I think this movie would have been better if the budget was much lower. It feels like they tried too hard to force in dramatic action scenes and big-budget set-pieces (which certainly did look good, to be fair), when the setup didn't need so much of that. They should have kept the movie small rather than trying to making it big; the heart of the movie is the relationship between the two main characters, they didn't need to focus as much on action and explosions to make that work.
I had mixed feelings on Adam Driver in this film. Sometimes he was good, other times his performance just felt too... flat, too cold for... what I would have expected from the character in the given scenes. But that's just me. Ariana Greenblatt was good, though unfortunately I can't say I enjoyed her performance as I felt her character wasn't that well written. Chloe Coleman and Nika King were fine.
For me, this movie was a 6/10. It's not a bad film, I just couldn't really get into it because of how so much of it felt so forced. I think a lot of people have an easier time ignoring that kind of contrived writing, and would enjoy the movie a lot more than I did. And that's fine of course.
I wasn't convinced the whole "prehistoric Earth" thing was really necessary; it could have been normal humans on an alien planet rather than human-identical aliens on Earth. But I suppose that this makes some things easier; no need to explain alien species or the "ticking clock" impending disaster as we all know about dinosaurs and the big meteorite.
But then it occured to me that perhaps the fact that the aliens were completely identical to humans was not just lazy filmaking; there's a part early on when Mills says that two stasis pods were missing. Why two specifically? Initially I thought Koa's pod was supposed to be one of the missing ones, but what if it wasn't; what if the film is trying to imply that the two missing pods were, well, Adam and Eve? That "humans" are the descendents of these aliens? That would explain why the film felt the need to include a "time-skip" scene at the end where we're given a glimpse of human civilisation advancing.
I mean, it doesn't matter, it's ultimately a mostly meaningless twist that adds very little to the movie, but at least it makes the choice of time and setting a little more meaningful. So that's nice I guess.
Let's talk about how contrived it was. First of all, they happened to crash just before the famous asteroid hit? Sure, they crashed because ran into asteroid fragments so there's an argument to be made that it's not exactly some big coincidence or something but... it still feels pretty contrived to me. It doesn't help that after days on the planet they finally manage to take off literally moments before the asteroid actually hits.
When they were asleep under the waterfall, it seems the big dino woke Mills up just in time for him to save Koa from choking? Also how did it find them down there? Then when they were trying to crawl out of there, it seems a bit forced that there was a cave-in that exactly blocked the path between them in the moment they were separated without injuring or killing either of the pair. Anyother fun little "coincidence": when they could not take off because their ship was pointing in the wrong direction, how fortunate that a bunch of very large dinosaurs showed up just then and just happened to knock their ship around so it was pointing upwards and was able to take off. Oh, and it was quite fortunate that the geyser decided to spout boiling hot water at the exact instant that the dinosaur had its face over the hole.
And that's just some of the "coincidences". Another issue I had was that the way characters and especially dinosaurs acted didn't feel realistic to me. Sometimes when Mills was interacting with his daughter or Koa, and I expected a warm and/or emotional performance from Adam Driver, I felt he seemed too cold or distant. I'm certainly not saying that his entire performance was like that, only that there were a few times when it felt odd to me.
Koa doesn't speak English. She quickly picks up a few words as Mills tries to communicate. It just felt a bit off to me that she immediately pronounces them perfectly. Maybe it's a cliche, but I expect people to stumble a bit over foreign words the first few times they try to speak them. I'm pretty sure my pronounciation of the few words I know in different languages is far from perfect anyway.
There was one part where the attempt to build up the relationship between Mills and Koa felt a little rushed to me: when they first set out for the mountain, they barely know each other and can hardly communicate, Koa starts... acting playful I guess? She's trying to get Mills attention by throwing berries at him. But this is very soon after she woke up, she can't communicate with him effectively, they have recently had a near-brush with a big scary dinosaur, she's worried about her parents, and they have just started walking through a strange and dangerous land. Her behaviour just felt out of place to me; at least I would expect her to spend a bit more time with Mills before she starts, I dunno, throwing stuff at him.
What irritated me far more than some slight... eccentricities in the way the human characters acted, was how the dinosaurs behaved. They were far too agressive; they existed simply to kill, mostly lacking any actual survival instincts. When the pack attacks the two humans, they throw themselves forwards even as Mills is literally disintegrating them with his weapon. Later we see the loud gunshots of his rifle scare away the last remaining member of the pack, but before those same gunshots don't phase them at all, and even a grenade going off right in front of them, blowing up several members of the pack, doesn't seem to do anything to discourage the survivors from throwing themselves forwards.
Animals have better survival instincts than that, at least ones that have survived the harsh conditions of this prehistoric Earth. After all these are only mid-sized dinosaurs and there's much larger and scarier ones running around. In real life, animals react to loud sounds, especially loud concussive sounds that they've never heard before.
It actually gets even worse later, as metorites start to rain from the sky, filling the land with explosions and fire, three giant dinosaurs attack them when they are inside the ship! I mean, seriously? There's so much wrong with that. I'm not expert, but I reckon most animals are careful around things they haven't seen before: these humans don't exactly look like anything these dinos are used to eating. They are also quite hard to see, being barely visible through the narrow visor of the ship. And even then they don't exactly look like an easy meal; not one worth slamming your head into a chunk of steel over. Plus, you know, THE WHOLE WORLD IS BURNING, WITH FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE! What kind of creature is sitting there thinking "this is a great time to go out of my way for a light snack"? Do these things have NO self-preservation instincts? Even after the final dinosaur gets a face full of steam, it still refuses to back away and continues trying to kills Mills.
Well, it tries to kill him eventually. After standing there staring at him for a few minutes of course. Despite the dinosaurs being unbelievably aggressive and blood-thirsty, they somehow still do the whole "slowly stalking forwards in full view, not attacking when they have the chance" thing. When the pack of smaller dinos shows up while Mills has dislocated his arm, they emerge from the brush very very slowly, walking forwards at a snail's pace as they wait for him to get his arm back in his socket before finally rushing forwards. This happens again when the bigger dinos are attacking Mills at the end, repeatedly refusing to rush in and finish him off at times when he would not be able to defend himself.
That kind of... "forced drama" I suppose, is forgiveable sometimes, but just felt like it undermined this movie, taking away from the film's strengths in exchange for cheap clumsy attempts at thrills. I honestly would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they worried less about going big and dramatic, and just focussed more on the human element. But hey, that's just me.
So Mills' rifle does very little when he shoots one big dino in the face at close range earlier, then later he kills a dino with it while peppering it's entire body with shots? OK. And why is it that the first time the big dino got a face full of steam it had no effect, but the second time its skin completely sloughed off?
Watching Koa dump a whole bag of grenades into the tree stump to kill one tiny little chihuahua-sided lizard was painful. Why did Mills give her the entire bag? Keep a few for yourself man!
Why were the passengers even in cryo sleep? Mills mentions it's an exploratory mission, suggesting they are far from civilised planets, yet the ship couldn't even account for a few rocks in it's path (pretty crappy AI if you ask me), which implies to me that they are in an area of space that is considered "safe"; the ship is allowed to fly while the only pilot is asleep after all. And when they send out a distress signal, it seems a rescue arrived in like two days? That... doesn't sound like they are that far from civilisation. Sure, I can come up with reasons why they would be in cryo sleep, but those reasons feel a bit contrived, and more importantly it just feels narratively inconsistent overall. To me at least.
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