‘The Lair’ Review: Neil Marshall Goes Full B-Movie With Gruesome Results
Neil Marshall makes his best movie in a long time with The Lair, though it may not satiate fans of serious, character-driven cinema.
There’s definitely fun to be had with The Lair. It’s certainly not the greatest movie in the world, but its B-movie/schlock qualities made it one hell of a good time, especially when compared to Neil Marshall’s god-awful Hellboy reboot and his previous film, The Reckoning, which was deeply exploitative and objectifying. Marshall casts his wife Charlotte Kirk in the lead role again, as Lieutenant Katie Sinclair, a pilot whose plane crashes near a bunker. After being chased off by a group of terrorists, Sinclair enters the bunker and encounters a group of man-made/alien creatures. From there, she tries to warn a colonel that they are coming and everyone near the vicinity is in imminent danger, but to no avail. The carnage racks up lots and lots of heavily mutilated bodies.
Which is part of what made The Lair fun. It’s not a movie to watch where you’re going to think about for a week or two. It’s a movie purely made for you to turn your brain off and enjoy. It’s even better when most of the acting is terribly risible, which is perfectly in line to the kind of films The Cannon Group made in the 1980s. Spectacle on a budget with actors phoning it in. It rules, and The Lair is no exception.
Why Marshall keeps casting Charlotte Kirk in his movies is a mystery, aside from the obvious fact that she is his wife. Clearly, he wanted Milla Jovovich for this picture, dressing Kirk in the same way she appeared in Resident Evil: Extinction, but she couldn’t convincingly convey any line of dialogue or emotion without accidentally creating ‘so bad it’s good’ type comedy. Her timing is completely off, especially during scenes of extreme tension. If she were the one convincing people that alien-like creatures are coming, everyone would probably do the same as the captain in the film and not believe her one second. The rest of the acting falls in that category–extremely milquetoast, with not a memorable performance from anyone, save for Hadi Khanjanpour who plays Kabir, the only character with a shred of progression from beginning to end.
Every other character does not evolve—it’s almost as if Marshall wanted to tell the story of The Lair through Kabir’s perspective and made Kirk the star at a last-minute request. But are you watching a movie about alien-like creatures for character growth? Of course not. You’re watching it for the blood, guts, and practical effects.
As far as CGI explosions, bullets, and blood go—it all looks terrible. But the movie more than succeeds in creating a terrifying practical creature that is a legitimate threat. Whenever they appear on screen, there’s a sudden weight to the film that everything is going to go wrong. And when it does, it unfolds itself spectacularly into well-constructed action scenes with lots (and lots) of blood and gore.
And while the acting and visual effects are far from perfect, The Lair will still manage to hold the audience’s interest through its relentless action. Once it starts, it never stops and delivers a fun enough popcorn carnage that’s designed to make you sit back, turn your brain off, and enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.