Neil Marshall reunites with his The Reckoning star Charlotte Kirk for a fun action horror with the freshly released The Lair. Kirk stars as Capt. Kate Sinclair is a decorated pilot shot down while flying a routine mission over Afghanistan. Now stranded in hostile territory, Kate feels her luck changes when she finds an underground bunker that might provide somewhere safe to regroup. While she finds some fellow soldiers, the bunker is home to an army of half-alien half-human creatures, which are now running free, killing everything in their path.

Neil Marshall has directed two movies I hold very dear to my heart, his brilliant low-budget debut with Dog Soldiers and his follow-up (which was needlessly given a sequel) The Descent. Marshall’s debut was an inventive take on the werewolf genre made with grit, gusto and bags of humour. However, The Descent was a brutal exercise in terror; it combines two of my deepest fears, confined spaces and subterranean creatures that feed on human flesh. I think all of us (if we’re honest with ourselves) have a fear of subterranean creatures that feed on human flesh; I’d be concerned about the person that isn’t terrified of subterranean creatures that feed on human flesh, subterranean or otherwise.

Marshall is under no illusions about the type of film he’s making here, The Lair is a B-movie, and he fully embraces this in every frame. Half-human, half-alien creatures are nothing new, and Marshall isn’t trying to reinvent the genre; all he’s trying to serve up is a blood-soaked creature feature. While we don’t get to know many of the characters too well, as they meet an untimely and gruesome end, Jamie Bamber has a ball as the gruff eyepatch-wearing Major; a man who does not consider his personal safety before making decisions.

Returning more to his Dog Soldiers roots after the Hellboy reboot, The Lair is a gun-ho gore fest full of wild action and a welcome return to horror for director Neil Marshall.

The Lair is out now on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.