Written and Directed by David Robert Mitchell | 99 min | ▲▲1/2 | In Cinemas
It’s important to note that this picture from the filmmaker who gave us It Follows and the criminally underrated Under The Silver Lake is produced by one JJ Abrams. Abrams has always been an acolyte of the school of Steven Spielberg, specifically the films he and his other Amblin directors did in the 1980s. Abrams’ homage to that era was the abysmal Super 8, which proved it’s a lot harder to do suburban fantasy than it looks. This is a better movie in a similar suit, but what really works here isn’t the way it cleaves to Spielberg, it’s how it’s an homage to Roger Corman.
That’s because the best bits are what make it a monster movie. We’re in the early ’80s in suburban Michigan hanging with the Platt family. Mom Denise — played by Anne Hathaway, who with Mother Mary, Prada 2, The Odyssey, and the forthcoming Verity is the hardest working woman in showbiz, 2026 — is (secretly) writing a novel in her basement based on her unhappy marriage to Greg (Ewan McGregor), who’s (secretly) lost his job so earning money delivering pizzas in the evening. They have two sweet kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), who seem largely personality-free aside from both kind-of having the hots for a new girl (Jordan Alexa Davis) in the neighbourhood.
Then, one night, the whole area loses power and water, and by the next day, people are being eaten by dinosaurs. This isn’t a spoiler — it’s right there in the trailer.
But the movie has a large pile of brontosaur excrement to climb. For starters, McGregor and Hathaway have negative chemistry — they practically repel each other. It’s a matter of commitment — she’s a laser beam, fully immersed and convincing, while he’s shuffling, shambling, and uncertain. I like McGregor, but he’s the weak link here. He’s playing Greg as someone never prepared to face reality, but also not nearly vulnerable enough for us to have any sympathy.
Anyone who has seen ET, Poltergeist, or Gremlins, will immediately recognize the world Mitchell wants his story to be set in, but the effort to recreate that American idyll, and those kinds of movies, is about as authentic as the awful wig perched on McGregor’s head. Even a lesser Spielberg — remember the end of The Lost World with the T-Rex stomping through suburban San Diego? This can’t compare with the wonder and terror Spielberg conjured.
Anachronistic touches fill the screen — like when a suburban phone booth slash bus stop has a huge digital clock on it. That’s handy for a plot point but otherwise is totally unconvincing for 1982. The score by Michael Giacchino, doing his very best to ape John Williams, is distractingly inadequate. All this effort to copy better movies shows in stark relief how this picture doesn’t measure up.
But when the dinosaurs appear, all is forgiven — Oak Street sings when, later, there’s the running and the screaming. There’s quite a lot of that — every carnivorous critter you can imagine and some maybe you can’t show up to eat the neighbours. This is a lot of fun, along with the welcome arrival of humour in the third act. My favourite moment is when a gigantic, white serpent slithers into the Platt’s home without anyone noticing until it’s almost too late.
That stuff feels like we’re watching Carnosaur 4 made with real financial support — this is deeply silly, but it works as a B-movie entertainment with an A-budget. The dinosaurs look as least as good as they did in the most recent Jurassic World movie, which is saying something given the resources those filmmakers have available to them. The advantage this film has over Rebirth is some measure of originality, and the occasional gory moment should also delight the horror fans.
