Director: Neil Marshall
Script: Neil Marshall & Charlotte Kirk
Cast: Charlotte Kirk, Jonathan Howard, Jamie Bamber, Mark Strepan, Hadi Khanjanpour, Leon Ockendon, Troy Alexander, Kibong Tangi
Running time: 97 minutes
Year: 2022
Certificate: 15
The Lair begins with a British fighter plane being shot down over Afghanistan. The pilots manage to eject in time, but are quickly found by Taliban forces who quickly shoot dead the co-pilot. However, they aren’t so lucky with the pilot LT. Kate Sinclair (Charlotte Kirk) who manages to escape into a nearby Russian bunker once the Taliban have accidentally blown the doors open with a rocket grenade. With her wannabe assassins in hot pursuit, Sinclair finds her way to some top secret laboratories, far underground. Unfortunately, for both the downed pilot and her enemies, despite the fact that the bunker has been abandoned since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, it still has residents, very nasty ones, who are accidentally released from their long hibernation and aren’t happy.
The pilot is able to make a very narrow escape and finds herself picked up by an allied US recon unit who have a temporary base nearby that they currently share with members of a passing SAS unit. The soldiers also capture one of the Taliban, Kabir (Hadi Khanjanpour), who they take back to the base also. The unit don’t really believe Kate’s story initially, but they soon change their tunes when the base is attacked by several powerful creatures who turn out to be hybrids – a cross between humans and aliens; and vicious ones at that.
Playing out like a roll call of Neil Marshall’s greatest hits, The Lair has much in common with both Dog Soldiers and The Descent, with a smattering of homages to John Carpenter’s The Thing too – check out the excellent autopsy scene, for example. As is usual with a Neil Marshall film, the characters are well drawn, if somewhat briefly, admittedly, with some fun dialogue exchanges between the bantering soldiers. This makes for a solid element of realism to balance out the more out-there plot elements.
The film is generally nicely shot, although I didn’t like some of the fast cutting of close-up shots near the beginning, which made it hard to discern what was going on for a short period. The score, by Chris Drake, is reminiscent of some of the aforementioned John Carpenter’s work, with plenty of moody synth work, and the acting is of a decent standard, although a couple of the more minor roles seemed to be played by, how shall we say, less accomplished thespians, including Neil himself, here playing a black ops operative, although I don’t think he has many (any) lines – but I might be wrong.
Overall then this Shudder original features all the elements that Marshall fans have come to expect, including dangerous creatures, lots of kinetic action, gory deaths, some fun banter and interesting locations. Despite not doing anything particularly original, pre-existing Marshall fans won’t be disappointed and I’m sure the film will make him some well-deserved new fans along the way. Recommended…
The Lair is being distributed by Shudder on DVD, Blu-ray and on Digital. Unfortunately, there aren’t many extras on the disc, only a Making of the Lair (7 mins) electronic press kit type of mini-documentary. However, this is still packed with mini interviews with principal cast and producers, etc. so is still worth a look. Just a shame they didn’t include an audio commentary of some kind and maybe a trailer too.
The Lair is available on DVD, Blu-ray and download (to keep) – cat No: AB2068 (Blu-ray) & AV3739 (DVD), and was released on 17/7/23.
