Although you'd think a film starring Adam Driver against a herd of dinosaurs couldn't possibly be dull, "65" is just that.

This film would have benefited from being significantly sillier. The high-profile science fiction film reportedly cost $91 million to produce. However, it ought to have embraced its inherently B-movie roots. Instead, it tries to balance a harrowing family drama with a wilderness survival story. Neither succeeds because they are so fast and without development. These characters have no personality, and the action scenes quickly become monotonous and boring. Jump scares, obtrusive music with overwhelming notes, screaming and running, and gnashing of teeth are all present.

But the film from the writing-directing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods offers an intriguingly contradictory premise. It takes place 65 million years ago but suggests that futuristic civilizations existed back then on planets throughout the universe. On one of them, Driver stars as a space pilot named Mills. He’s about to embark on a two-year exploratory mission in order to afford medical treatment for his ailing daughter.

The ship Mills is flying unexpectedly and encounters an asteroid field on the way to his destination. It rips to pieces, and crashes. Except for one, who is a girl around his daughter's age all the passengers in cryogenic sleep die. Ariana Greenblatt plays her, and her name is Koa. And the planet is, wait for it, Earth, with its marshy landscape reminiscent of Dagobah.

In order to hijack the escape pod that is situated there and take off before dinosaurs can stomp and munch on them, Mills and Koa must hike from the debris to a mountainside in "65." The creatures can be startling at times, but at other times they look so cheesy and fake, they’re like the animatronics you’d see at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. And yet! It almost would have been better—or at least more entertaining—if “65” had leaned harder into that silliness if it had played with the basic ridiculousness of mixing complex technology with the Cretaceous period. They rarely use Mills’ advanced gadgets in any inspired ways within this prehistoric setting. The few attempts at humor fall flat—they mainly consist of Koa making fun of Mills for being uptight—and moments of peril wrap up too tidily for us to luxuriate in their anxiety.

Worst of all, Driver doesn't have a lot of opportunities to act silly in this. He is a very intense performer, which can be exhilarating and funny if he knows how to turn it up. In "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," picture him screaming "More!" as he attacks Luke Skywalker, or in "Marriage Story," picture him pounding a wall during a heated dispute. Yet, the character he portrays in "65" is uninspired and generally irritated. Greenblatt, in contrast, makes the best of a character we know nothing about. Koa can only replicate the simple terms Mills uses to communicate with her, like "family," because she doesn't speak English.

65 is out now in theatres.