Writer & Director: Neil Marshall / 90 Minutes / Starring Jonathan Howard, Charlotte Kirk, Jamie Bamber, Hadi Hanjanpour / The Lair will be released in The UK soon by Shudder
Review by Rob Deb. You can read more of Rob's reviews here.
27th August 2022
The Pitch: A downed Royal Air Force pilot escapes a terrifying bunker in Afghanistan containing mutant man-made biological weapons and unwittingly brings the creatures back to a US Army base.
This is my first Frightfest as a complete 'festival passer' and is a different experience from my previous visits. On the one hand within moments of arriving people made small talk and were approachable with conversation. It's nice to know folks are there with a certain kinship from the off, and unlike other genre groups have a sense of just loving the stuff than trying to prove who is the better fan for knowing which film in the Knob Kicker franchise was the one where they revealed Knob Kicker’s genuine origin before a Strong leading Bra, stiletto kicked off his spiky bum spikes, thus losing him the source of all his power. Any real fan knows it was Knob Kicker 6, the nadir of the franchise with the scratch and sniff screenings. On the other hand, being full-on there, not just for the film, but for horror... they are also going to be the most critical of any trope, trick, swipe, or get-out a film may try and pull with a more ‘mundane’ audience.
THE LAIR FEATURES GROSSEST MONSTERS this side of a Vestron video release
The Lair shows a real sense of gumption in the face of this. Neil Marshall creates a story that fulfils each classic move from his earlier features. Rather than try to deconstruct, he turns the amp to 11 and sneers ‘what's your fucking problem?’ at each turn. Touted in many ways as a successor to ‘Dog Soldiers’, his first feature 20 years ago. The lair follows an RAF Lt. Kate Sinclair, who in addition to being an RAF Pilot, can jump over anything, Pritt-sticks her wounds, has a photographic memory, and is a Widow raising a young boy. When she is not doing all that and probably teaching Pilates to wind down, she is the only survivor of her team when they are shot down in Afghanistan in 2017. There, she discovers a bunker full of the grossest monsters this side of a Vestron video release. Once she escapes she becomes part of an encampment run by silver age Nick Fury and made up of a collection of quirky soldiers who frankly got stuck there because no one wanted them. We have the lothario, the nerd, the kleptomaniac... special mention to the Welsh soldier delusional about the teams' rugby prowess. (Cough, cough) Ireland won the triple crown in 2022 (cough, cough).
setting the film in a real military situation FEELs LIKE a misstep
The Afghani fighters are similarly thinly drawn. I do feel setting the film not only in a real military situation but a recent one at that, is a misstep. The story could have easily taken place on Mars or under an older conflict. However, the film is unilateral in its depiction of characters and types to a level similar to Inglorious Basterds or even 'Allo, 'Allo. As the team and cultural friction add a lot of typical Marshall mirth. The international ensemble makes the jokes far more scatological than Dog Soldiers or Doomsday, but there is a sense of quantity over quality with them that carries along gamely. As the risks and dangers escalate it's also the character Kabir who seems to become the most defined as going through a real change as the film progresses, Hadi Khanjanpour takes a character who could have walked out of a background scene in ‘Jewel of the Nile’ and makes him one of the most relatable on screen.
It's upping the stakes of the Jenga of tension that Marshall does so well.
The film shows a canny sense of pace and action. The monster design is classic and with some unique variations that add to the pulp feel. Deaths are expected and they occur, but the sheer visceral nature of people and monsters dying do end up heightening the action to a certain frantic fury. It's upping the stakes of the Jenga of tension that Marshall does so well. And this is where I realised I differed from the fright fest pros… I gasped at a lot of scenes they wouldn't flinch at. But the jokes hit more than missed. The film is a lean cut of muscle slicing through into horror and action that is gritty and has a certain octane quality. This is a film for a group of you, at night, with beers and pizza, makes no bones about it. And that is incredibly refreshing in this constantly parenthesizing age. Check it out.
Lair will be released by Shudder in the UK soon.