The Lair – Blu Ray Review

ACCLAIMED DIRECTOR Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) returns with The Lair, a lean, mean creature feature, which, according to the director, is inspired by the ‘classic genre movies like Alien, Predator and The Thing’.

This spine-chilling Shudder Original features terrifying monsters, gruesome violence and tougher-than- tough characters.

Claustrophobic, fear-fuelled and strikingly shot, this mighty monster-thriller gets its highly anticipated Blu-ray, DVD and digital release on 17th July courtesy of Acorn Media International.

When Lieutenant Kate Sinclair (Charlotte Kirk – The Reckoning, Ocean’s Eight) is shot down over Afghanistan, Sergeant Tom Hook (Jonathan Howard – Thor: The Dark World, World War Z) is sent in to lead a specialised team of SAS troops to find the missing soldier and bring her home.

As Sinclair desperately tries to evade her pursuers, she stumbles across a forsaken military bunker and seeks refuge, but little does she know that this seemingly abandoned base holds a dark secret… a horde of nightmarish creatures known as Ravagers, half-human and half-alien, ravenous for flesh.

Narrowly escaping from the bunker, Sinclair finds safety at a nearby army base led by Major Roy Finch (Jamie Bamber – Marcella, Signora Volpe). But it’s not long before some unexpected and extremely dangerous visitors arrive, eliciting an adrenaline-fueled mighty battle for survival…

Enter The Lair at your own risk in this nightmarish, pulse-pounding and action-packed feature. 

The video and audio quality on this disc is great, as you might expect from a Blu-ray.

The picture pops, the blacks are black and not muddy. Handy when the film is fast paced and set in quite dark places.

The audio is crisp with a good mix. I could hear everything, including dialogue without the battle scenes blowing my eardrums out when you often need to crank the volume to hear what they’re saying these days.

You’ll hear that beautiful Wilhelm scream really nicely. The film gets bonus points for that alone.

Now, to the film itself. It’s a fun monster movie, with an an overall low budget B movie feel.

The main cast give perfectly acceptable performances, with nobody particularly standing out.

The creatures in this are really nicely designed, the creature faces will give anyone suffering from trypophobia a mental breakdown. Unfortunately though, they’re also suffering a little bit from Doctor Who monster, men in rubber suit syndrome. The autopsy scene really enhances this feeling, and during one battle scene the suit doesn’t even look like it fits the actor very well.

This was a shame as the creatures in Marshall’s two probably most popular horror films The Descent and Dog Soldiers were fantastic. The Descent especially excelled in the creature design. But hey, it’s big monsters in a bunker so we’ll get over it.

The script shows glimpses of Marshall’s brilliance, he really knows how to make his characters relatable, even in the most ridiculous of situations. There’s some misses, but quite a few quotable hits and at around an hour and a half runtime and fast paced action it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Perfect for inclusion in a creature feature movie marathon, this film really has the feel of a 1980’s monster romp, which for me is no bad thing.

The Blu-ray isn’t that great when it comes to special feature(s), with only a blink and you’ll miss it 7 minute “Making of” on the disc which is more of an on set chat with individual cast members than a making of.

Describe this movie in three words? Big Dumb Fun!