First was the Rise, now is the Dawn. One of the few film projects in which James Franco is not currently involved, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a very vanilla affair as far as sequels go, getting the job done well enough while leaving everything so very open-ended (in order for a whole slew of further sequels to keep on coming).

This one picks up exactly where the last one left off, telling (via a credits sequence) of a worldwide plague, dubbed ‘simian flu’, that wipes out most of the population. 10 years later, Caesar and his monkey crew have carved out a home for themselves in the vast woods north of San Francisco. He remains the de facto leader of the clan, with a teenaged son and a newborn. Andy Serkis brings the swagger and sway of a politician to Caesar in this follow-up, remaining the most interesting element by far (just as in the first film). Another holdover from Rise is Koba, now played by actor Toby Kebbell (soon to be the new Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four reboot), who meets Caesar at least halfway with his animalistic and foreboding facial expressions. The pair feels very differently about the surviving humans to the south—who are hoping to regain power and reboot society—and politics, intrigue and betrayal become heavily involved.

To balance things out on the human side, we have YA actor Kodi Smitt-McPhee (of Let Me In fame), who brings a sensitivity and intelligence to the primarily brutal proceedings. And beautiful Keri Russell looks as though she hasn’t aged a day since Felicity, doing an excellent job as the Love Interest.

The woman apes, however, are relegated very much to the background, with a Disney-fied queen to Caesar and her masked attendants being the biggest stretch. Aside from that and some very vague sign language between the apes, the filmmakers here took immense pains to package this story in as realistic way as possible, and the metaphor is never lost on us for a second – seeing monkeys on horseback with guns is unsettling in how it reminds us of real news footage from any number of war-torn and developing countries.