Yes, “Predator”, singular, this has nothing to do with Extinction: Jurassic Predators (plural), which was done because The Dinosaur Project/The Lost Dinosaurs did ok in review and made some money, so we’re gonna make another found footage dinosaur movie, with good practical effects and worse in every other aspect.
But i already reviewed that. Just yesterday.
I have to preface i was gonna review Jurassic Thunder (the one head mounted machine guns on a T-Rex) for this Dino Dicember slot, but i relented, because i felt nothing i could say will matter to a movie built on the foundation of the Dr. Evil meme, and doubles downs on its putrid shit factor, amplified and self-excusing itself due to the narrative frame of 80’s comic book and action flicks.
So i’d figure, why not, let’s do this other one i got with many other dinosaur movies DVDs from Amazon, it didn’t see it yet, at least there might actually be a plot and not just complete non-sense. But guess, what, this one is still made with the same attitudine found in many cynically manifactured modern bad movies, the complete disregard for any semblance of standards.
Well, not totally, as in you can tell in some scenes there’s effort from the cast and director, but it feels almost random, as the movie also pads itself out big time, even doing a self-deprecating joke with a crew shooting a low budget horror movie in the same woods, with the director talking of having to compromise with the budget, the lead actress lamenting how she’s better than that and the monster look too damn pathetic, until the T-Rex thankfully interrumpts this weaponized excuse.
And it is deflection, because everything in Jurassic Predator is amateur hour (it just is), and it’s clear they didn’t have the budget for a dinosaur movie, but decided to do it anyway, so we have to suffer through boring polite arguments in repurposed local school labs or offices, some mostly unsufferable comedy bits, a lot of thick british accents (it’s filmed in the UK alright), and not even 2 minutes tops of dinosaurs, because they clearly didn’t finish the half-decent T-Rex puppet, they never show it in full, it’s either the upper part of the body, with maybe a bit of neck, or the tail.
They even kill the damn thing off-screen at the end so they don’t have to show the props anymore, that or they did finish it but couldn’t manage to shoot or utilize it to any degree due to inexperience.
With this and the really crappy, almost-no-budget gore, you wonder why even make it a dinosaur movie, since the best scene has a speech about how a fellow soldier of the protagonist killed himself because he couldn’t live with what he did in the war… or something, the audio mixing isn’t great, one time the “inspiring military talk” BGM almost drowns the speech it’s supposed to enhance.
Seriously, why not make it a war drama of sorts, instead, especially with how the prologue is set and how jarring is to see the title “Jurassic Predator” fade in after an attempted robbery – played serious – is thwarted by the protagonist? Not that most of anything makes sense in connecting to each other, anyway, but at least there is a narrative. It’s crap, but it’s NOT total non-sense.
I haven’t talked about the plot yet because it the same old rubbish, the ultimate bargain bin dinosaur movie plot, the cheapest one, down to dumping the whole backstory in a text crawl at the beginning. A secret government research has scientists clone dinosaurs back to life from DNA. They make a T-Rex, it escapes the secret facility, and starts running amok in the nearby town, [Devil’s Creek]. To further complete the C-movie dinosaur bingo, a rag tag group of people (just random unlikeable asses, like the crooked criminal brothers, the improbable lead singer of a “mariachi rock” group, etc.) are recruited as mercenaries and sent in to care of bidness.
As a kicker, it ends with a dino egg shown in a glass case… not that the movie actually ends at 78 minutes, it ends at 68 minutes, the remaining 10 minutes are just long credits. Of course. OF COURSE.
No offense, Andrew Jones and cast, but i wouldn’t bother doing Jurassic Predator 2. Just… don’t.
Unless you had fun doing it, because i can’t say the same from here.
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