When it released in 2005, The Descent earmarked Neil Marshall as one of the most exciting directors in horror. Following a brief stint with Hollywood blockbusters afterwards, directing Centurion and 2019’s Hellboy reboot, he returns alongside his partner and frequent collaborator Charlotte Kirk in The Lair, a sci-fi horror film clearly inspired by the likes of Aliens. Unfortunately, it doesn’t return Marshall to the horror pedestal upon which he once stood.

Kirk plays Lieutenant Kate Sinclair, an RAF pilot shot down alongside her commanding officer over a remote part of an Afghan battlefield. Scrambling for safety after a tense firefight, she soon ends up in the eponymous underground bunker that harbours nightmarish creatures within.

It’s a simple premise, but one that’ll immediately feel familiar to genre fans. The instant touchstones I felt when watching The Lair were Aliens and the Resident Evil series, partly due to the design of these experiments-gone-wrong that hunt Kate and the rag-tag team of soldiers she links up with, but also due to the squad-based frolics and slow uncovering of a vast conspiracy. Those influences make The Lair a lot more charming than it may otherwise be, because it can be a slog.

The main problem is that unlike the cast of loveable soldiers in those aforementioned franchises, there’s nothing especially interesting about the characters here. Kirk’s Sinclair is underwritten aside from one introductory scene to her family, and a lot of the other soldiers simply melt into each other, without distinguishing personality factors aside from their country of origin. That said, I was a fan of Leon Ockenden’s Oswald, for a cherished rare portrayal of the Welsh nationality on-screen.

But for most of The Lair, it’s less about characters and more about grisly action. It takes the final sequences of Aliens and makes them a 90-minute feature, filled with buckets of gore and lots of gunfire. The grim scientific abominations this crew of plucky soldiers fight is pretty terrifying to start with, even though the unavoidable man-in-a-suit visuals become a bit obvious as you go on.

Sadly, there’s just not enough to distinguish The Lair from the plethora of higher-quality sci-fi horror productions out there. There’s nothing especially unique going on here, and while the schlocky violence is entertaining to a point, this isn’t a film you’ll ever feel the need to go back to.

★★

The Lair will release on Blu-ray, DVD and digital on July 17 2023.

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