THE LAIR (2022)

Studio:     RLJE Entertainment
Director:    Neil Marshall
Writer:     Neil Marshall, Charlotte Kirk
Producer:  Daniel-Konrad Cooper
Stars:     Charlotte Kirk, Jonathan Howard, Jamie Bamber, Leon Ockenden, Hadi Khanjanpour, Troy Alexander, Mark Strepan, Kibong Tanji

Review Score:

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Summary:

Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan confront an unexpected threat when vicious creatures are inadvertently released from an underground Russian bunker.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Insurgents shoot down British fighter pilots Captain Kate Sinclair and WSO Terry Johnson over Afghanistan. Engaged in a firefight once on the ground, the insurgents kill Johnson while Kate flees to an old Russian bunker hidden underground. The insurgents pursue Kate into a secret laboratory where stray gunfire inadvertently releases feral creatures from stasis chambers. As the monsters attack, Kate escapes back to the surface with a friendly insurgent named Kabir.

American soldiers find Kate and Kabir and take them back to their base camp. The camp’s commander, Major Roy Finch, dismisses Kate’s claims of creatures, but confiscates microfilm she recovered from the lab and calls in to HQ. Kate meets other soldiers who include Sergeant Tom Hook, Corporal Kip Wilks, Corporal Jade Lafayette, Private Dwayne Everett, Private Eddie Serano, Private Tucker O’Neill, and British soldiers Sergeant Oswald Jones, Trooper Dave Bromhead, and Trooper Vince Hughes.

Having tracked Kate, escaped creatures descend on the camp after nightfall. As chaos ensues, the monsters slaughter Serano, Everett, O’Neill, and Hughes. Following several violent encounters with the creatures, Kate, Kabir, Hook, Finch, Wilks, Lafayette, Jones, and Bromhead regroup inside a shipping container to wait out the nighttime attack.

With the creatures having retreated at daybreak, Wilks examines a carcass left behind and determines that sunlight can hurt the beasts. Finch further reveals that Army Intelligence informed him that Russians who retrieved alien DNA from a downed spacecraft and spliced it with humans secretly created the creatures, and the Afghan invasion was actually a cover-up to retrieve the monsters for use as bioweapons.

The carcass suddenly reanimates and attacks Kate with tentacles that briefly take over her mind. Finch sacrifices himself to blow up the creature with a grenade.

Kate, Kabir, Hook, Wilks, Lafayette, Jones, and Bromhead mount a mission to destroy the underground bunker. Wilks remains outside to operate a Humvee’s winch so the others can descend into the bunker through an elevator shaft.

Creatures capture Hook, but Kate leads the effort to rescue him. The soldiers discover the Russian experiments were even wilder than previously thought when they find a tank containing a massive monster. As action spreads throughout the subterranean facility, a creature bites off Lafayette’s face. Jones blows himself up to take out a horde of monsters. A creature thrusts its claw through Bromhead’s skull. Kabir realizes one of the humanoid beasts is his mutated father just before the elevator pulls down the Humvee on top of them. Meanwhile, Wilks tries fighting off insurgents outside.

Kate and Hook make it back to the surface and rescue Wilks. The three surviving soldiers quickly race away from the area in time to avoid a bomb dropped on the bunker. Kate, Hook, and Wilks realize a secret cabal in the military is still trying to gain control of the creatures.

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Review:

Since I’ve previously defended both Rob Zombie and Mike Flanagan against criticism over repeatedly casting their wives in their movies, it would be hypocritical of me to say anything snarky about writer/director Neil Marshall doing the same with his wife Charlotte Kirk. Nevertheless, and I realize “nevertheless” implies I’m about to do what I just said I wouldn’t, I still find a sour taste in Marshall and Kirk’s collaborations since Kirk’s scandals notoriously tie her to relationships with men in positions to provide her with roles. Benefit of the doubt assumes Marshall and Kirk are as in love as any other romantic pairing in the entertainment industry, yet their overlapping professional and personal dynamics seem strange given Kirk’s troubled history in Hollywood, and given Marshall’s apparently newfound desire to mostly just make low-budget larks with his wife as his chief co-creator now.

Anyway, “The Lair” finds Marshall trying to once again chase lightning while clutching the bottle that previously captured “Dog Soldiers” and “The Descent.” Unfortunately, albeit predictably considering the direction in which Marshall’s movies have been trending, “The Lair” aligns much closer in quality to his and Kirk’s previously panned vanity project “The Reckoning” (review here) than toward either of those two beloved B-movies.

Kirk stars as Captain Kate Sinclair, a British Air Force pilot who apparently spends more time in the Hair & Makeup trailer than training in a flight simulator. Sporting freshly cut and styled locks, and a full suite of face makeup to match, Kate crash-lands in Afghanistan after insurgents shoot her out of a cockpit in front of a green screen. Once engaged in a firefight on the ground, Kate retreats to a secret Russian bunker underground (is there any other kind of bunker in horror movies?) where stray gunfire releases a man in a creature suit from some sort of test chamber. Chaos ensues, of course.

A squadron of soldiers eventually rescues Kate alongside a stray insurgent named Kabir and takes them back to base camp. Here we meet a character even sillier than Kirk’s runway-ready military maven. In a role that would have gone to Casper Van Dien if “The Lair” had been made in America, “Battlestar Galactica’s” Jamie Bamber decides to play an Army major like he sprang to life out of an old episode of “G.I. Joe.” Wearing an eye patch while attempting the most laughable Matthew McConaughey impression your ears will ever have the misfortune of hearing, Bamber barks out bad one-liners and the usual “I give the orders around here!” babble like grizzled war vets always do under intense circumstances.

Kate meets additional members of the unit including, and I think these are their actual character names, Guy Who Likes Her, British Guy, Buff Black Guy, Kleptomaniac Black Woman, Guy with Glasses Who Is Somehow Both the Medic and a Humvee Driver, Private Nobody #1-3, and other miscellaneous macho men best described by their appearance or a single defining trait. Before too long, the bland beasts Kate inadvertently helped rouse from their subterranean Soviet slumber come out of the bunker to create carnage all over the camp. Chaos ensues, again, creating plentiful opportunities for monsters to mash and gun muzzles to loudly flash with fire.

It would appear that “The Lair’s” primary purpose was to let people be weekend warriors playing live-action Lazer Tag with prop rifles while a stuntperson did somersaults in a rubber monster suit. Even Neil Marshall gets in on the game with his appearance as a Black Ops marksman playing pretend soldier, because why not? If you’re going to make a movie that exists to fulfill yours and your wife’s filmmaking fantasies, might as well get your kicks in with a cosplay cameo too, right?

“The Lair” asks the question, are “serviceable” and “forgettable” interchangeable adjectives for describing this movie? One person’s “It’s mostly alright, I guess” is someone else’s “Ugh, why did I even bother?” So pick your preferred word for such situations and proceed having been advised accordingly. Serviceable or forgettable, “The Lair” makes for a mindless movie of gunfire and goop, dodgy CGI and dodgier creature design, and plenty of gruff guys grunting and waving lights down dark corridors.

If Neil Marshall’s name wasn’t on it, “The Lair” might quickly come and go as another throwaway thriller churned out cheaply for DTV audiences to obliviously ignore. Perhaps regrettably for him, however, it does have Marshall’s name attached, which instead adds another question mark to a career that’s now piling more plop on top of a once-revered résumé.

Review Score: 50

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