The Lair (2022)
A few days ago I was flipping through random movies on Shudder, I think I was browsing under the "creature" collection or something along those lines. I ended up seeing "The Lair" and figured I'd throw it on. The movie isn't great, hell it'd be a stretch to even call it good. The Lair is at best passable, but despite that it is fun.
Part creature feature and part combat action movie, the liar follows a Royal Air Force Pilot, Kate, who is downed in Afghanistan.
After her plane is shot down, Kate's flight partner is killed almost instantly and she is left to fend for herself. She flees the crash site and runs away from her attackers and ends up taking cover in a bunker of sorts. Inside, she ends up coming across what appears to be a lab with dated equipment and containers. She is cornered by an attacker who is killed by some form of "mutant" creature.
Kate flees the lab and encounters several American soldiers. Panicked by what she saw, she tries to convince the Americans that there is a creature in the lab that they need to go investigate. Her concerns are dismissed and she is taken back to the army base. At the base, it's revealed that they are a significant distance from any civilization, so Kate is left to hang out with the troops. Here we also meet several new characters, the grizzled and mysterious leader, the attractive captain, the general run-of-the-mill nerd, and a silent Afghani man who is proven to be a voice of reason.... just to name a few. Introductions are made and one-liners are passed around, then the plot gets right back to blowing stuff up.
After a few hours night falls on the camp and the mutants come out, another fight scene, and our protagonists are left to lick their wounds. This is followed by a mutant autopsy where we find out that the mutants are alien-human hybrids, and that their existence is a deep government secret.
In the third act, the remaining soldiers mount an offensive on 'The Lair' where the mutants live to shut it down. More manufactured tension ensues, and those that are meant to escape, escape
It's not great, the whole movie is extremely 'paint by the numbers'. That said, not everything that we watch has to be high art, nor does it have to be even good. If anything the plot was more of a vehicle to get the viewer between explosions, monsters, jokes, and scenes that appeal to the 'cool guys don't look at explosions' kind of stuff that a 13-year-old might dream up, and I can't fault it for that.
For example, toward the end of the movie, there is a sequence where one of the American soldiers gives Kate a leather bomber jacket that she puts on. This cuts to a slow-motion shot of the "gang" walking toward the camera. It is absolutely ridiculous, it feels silly, it is silly, but it's fun. The one-liners are the same, they aren't great, but they are plentiful and that kind of makes it okay, there is so much of this silliness that it sort of just lands with me.
The most instantly recognizable issue that 'The Lair' has is its lack of effects budget. At its very best 'The Lair' gives us mutants that are clearly men in rubber suits (which I'll admit I don't mind). But at its worst, it gives us an oversized toy missile superimposed over a shakey cam shot followed by a keyed-in explosion, which is spectacular for all the wrong reasons. There are lots of muzzle flash edits and lots of fake explosions throughout the film. The effects are at the very best cheap, and the movie takes a hit for it, especially in the scenes outside where in the bright sunlight. Most of the bad effects are the explosions. The men in suits aren't actually that bad, so the movie could have done a bit less and probably looked a lot better.
To be completely honest I don't understand where this movie came from and I'd love to know the story. It was directed and produced by Niel Marshall (and his wife Charolette Kirk plays the lead) who is probably best known for 'The Descent'. That movie is extremely popular within the horror community and rightfully so. It's a small-scale creature feature that plays on deep claustrophobia. The Lair, on paper, tries to do this, but it does it while trying to be an action flick and in doing so it loses all the things that make 'The Desecent' great.
At the end of the day... 'The Lair' is not good, not by a long shot, it's cheesy, it's got bad effects, it's got a plot that is as basic as I've ever seen, and ... well, despite all of that it is fun. I can't in good consciousness recommend 'The Lair' to anybody, but I have to admit, it certainly made my inner child grin.