Mark Reviews Movies: THE LAIR

The Lair, RLJE Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 27, 2022

Writer/director Neil Marshall runs out of ideas after the first act of The Lair. Actually, the first act isn't particularly original or clever, either, but the filmmaker at least shows some flair for building tension and establishing atmosphere through the early section of this material.

The setup revolves around a real-world event, namely the dropping of a massive, non-nuclear explosive—nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs"—in a remote part of Afghanistan in 2017. Forget the politics or anything else about the use of such a weapon or the decades-long war during which it was used. Marshall and co-screenwriter/star Charlotte Kirk certainly don't care about such matters. They're merely a hook, which is probably in bad taste, but then again, the central idea and plot here are so rudimentary that following that line of thought is giving the movie more credit than it deserves.

Kirk plays Sinclair, a widowed lieutenant in the British Air Force with a young son waiting for her at home. While flying a mission in Afghanistan, she and her wingman, who is killed in an ensuing firefight, are shot down by local insurgents. Alone and being chased by people who want to capture and kill her, Sinclair—who somehow remains perfectly made-up, with only light smudges of dirt and a bit of blood on her face, through the entire ordeal of the plot—takes shelter in a seemingly abandoned Soviet bunker.

While exploring and hiding from her pursuers, though, the pilot finds meals left behind, long-rotted corpses, and tanks filled with imposing silhouettes. Something happened here decades ago, and when gunfire shatters the glass of one of those chambers, Sinclair and the men chasing her learn what that was. There are monsters in this place.

Nothing about this is special or unique, but Marshall does know how to gradually reveal a threat, give us hints of the horrors in the darkness, and show off some nasty effects and violence when these monsters get work. That's true of the first act, at least. It takes advantage of the minimal light of the setting of this bunker, as well as only providing brief glimpses of the creatures—or what they can do, such as ripping the skin from a guy's skull—as they start picking off chasing insurgents one by one.

Matters of plot and style deteriorate once Sinclair is rescued by an American Army unit, who have been notified of the crash (They run into her with a truck as she stumbles down a dirt road). Brought back to the unit's base, Sinclair is introduced to a ragtag team of military misfits, a one-eyed commanding officer named Finch (Jamie Bamber), the kleptomaniac Lafayette (Kibong Tanji), a generic hero-type named Hook (Jonathan Howard), and a bunch of others who are inevitable fodder for the monsters once they inevitably arrive at the base, too.

Once the creatures do arrive, the movie more or less stays in fight-or-flight mode, with soldiers firing down upon the invading hordes of dark monsters stumbling through the desert and taking lumbering swipes at the disposal supporting cast as if they're actors in rubber suits—because they are, of course. The staging of a big, nighttime standoff is unconvincing, not only because the awkwardly moving monsters will suddenly appear in frame next to their soon-to-be victim, but also because the dimness of the scene and constant shock tactics never give sense of who's fighting what and where. It's all about bursts of gunfire being momentarily interrupted by some jaw-dislodging, decapitating flashes of gory violence.

Obviously, the characters don't matter (since most of the ones we meet are dead by the end of the first assault), save for Sinclair, Hook, Finch, Lafayette, a medic (played by Mark Strepan), and an insurgent driver (played by Hadi Khanjanpour), who was forced into combat and just wants to get home to his family. There might be one or two more, but the climactic battle that still needs to be fought, of course, needs some victims, too. What's irritating, though, is that the screenplay substitutes any kind of personality for some dropped-with-a-thud one-liners, which repeatedly diminish whatever tension might have resulted from the pair of hopeless stand-offs.

The third act is especially ridiculous, revolving around a plan that makes no logical or strategic sense at first and, somehow, makes even less sense as it becomes a rescue mission that didn't need to happen in the first place. We can't even trust the countdown to the conclusion of The Lair. As a voice inconsistently announces how long it'll take for that big bomb to reach its target, it's just a broken promise—much like the rest of the movie treats its opening act.

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