Review: The Lair

Blu-ray, DVD & Digital: The Lair (2022)

When Royal Air Force pilot Captain Kate Sinclair (Charlotte Kirk) is shot down while flying over a dangerous rebel area in Afghanistan, she escapes the ensuing gunfire by hiding in an abandoned underground bunker.

Unbeknownst to her, the bunker has been sealed shut for many years to keep inside the half-human, half-alien creatures known as ‘Ravagers’, whose appetite for human flesh leads to an all out battle where the humans are low on ammunition and the Ravagers let nothing get in the way of their hunger.

Co-written by director Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk (Marshall’s real life partner), The Lair is a typical ‘creature feature’, complete with men in rubber monster suits, that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 80s or 90s.

Unfortunately it does the same annoying thing as when they teamed up for The Reckoning, where it seems that no matter what Kirk’s character goes through, she still looks like she’s stepped out of the local beauty salon (albeit with a bit of blood and/or dirt sprinkled on her), as well as never really getting the emotions of the character through to the viewer, mostly coming across as one dimensional despite the current situation.

The dialogue follows much in the same way as Marshall’s classic Dog Soldiers, with soldier “banter” being thrown around with gleeful abandon, though never hitting the mark like it did when soldiers were fighting werewolves rather than human/alien hybrids. The accents are also quite hilarious at times too, being so over the top that it completely distracted me from what was happening on more than one occasion .

Despite the rubber suited monsters never really appearing particularly scary, I’d much rather still have these practical effects over CGI created creatures, which meant that when the CGI did kick in for some of the kills, it once again took me out of any peril the characters were in.

While far from being one of Marshall’s best movies, The Lair had a certain charm about it (despite all its flaws) that kept me entertained throughout, and while not anywhere near as good as a lot of sci-fi/horror movies, I enjoyed it in a way that I enjoy the likes of Creepozoids and Inseminoid.

Another of those “beers and mates” movies to get the most out of it.

Review by Dave from a disc kindly supplied by Acorn Media International via Aim Publicity.