Yeah, no waiting about another year, i’m reviewing both Dinosaur Hotel sequels back to back, hoping to Dino Saint Nicholas Of Myra that 2025 doesn’t bring out a Dinosaur Hotel 4.
Please, Jagged Edge Productions, focus on the Winnie The Pooh and fairy tale slasher stuff instead, because to say i didn’t enjoy any of the Dinosaur Hotel films so far.. it’s being overly kind.
Honestly i think i enjoyed working more than the first Dinosaur Hotel, the sequel was a slight improvement but still an experience that felt like a thousand years had passed since i started the film, despite the 72 minutes runtime, but that one had an open ending that was very “battle royale-esque” of sorts, with the frontman/creator going rogue to get back at the new people running the show that tried to push him, leaving on that plot thread for Dinosaur Hotel 3 to pick up.
Oh i guess SPOILERS. Who cares. I don’t. And these movies have barely a plot anyway, the characters are stereotypes at best, and are a struggle to sit through, so bite me, as they say, i’d rather you not bother even for the morbid curiosity some dino buffs might want to satisfy.
Heck, no one even bothered to leave a review on IMDB for this one, that does say a lot.
So, the plot… what’s even the point? They do another of these “dino royale” survival games where they put people in not-hotels (at the least the first one did take place in a hotel of sorts) and theres a big money prizes at stake for who survives.
You’d think that would matter but NOPE, why actually build on previous entries when the plot was so fuckin thin on the ground, when there’s nothing of value to lose, there’s no real loss in reharshing the same fuckin concept without properly escalating anything in ways that matter.
at least Dinosaur Hotel 2 brought back the protagonist of the first, here there are some random new people that find themselves in the game, Sienna is not back, after the ending of the second film, which technically close her storyline, but mostly because i feel the actress had enough of this dinosaur series, which would be understendable.
On the flipside, this one actually takes place in a hotel and not some concrete abandoned industrial place of sorts, and we get to see the very “ cheapo Squid Game” looking clean up crew in the opening that admittely starts thing right off the bat, with something actually going on, and finally we have something that actually resembles a plot and some production values so the whole “death game-battle royale” thing can actually be used in proper instead of existing only as a gist, a summary on IMDB, alongside the dinosaurs that now – mostly – blend in better with the locations, even if still done via cheap CG and basically spawn out of nowhere, they’re almost passable, even.
Except for the fuck awful T-rex at the end, that feels like the exact same level of rubbish CG of the first, but aside from that, yeah, i’m kinda flabbered in my gaster, this is an actual, palpable improvement over the previous movies, already an unexpected “twist” (even more so since Dinosaur Hotel 2 was not better per sé, just less painful, and arguably made the title make even less sense), acting is now somewhat passable for a low budget flick, doesn’t induce spontaneous mocking laughter, i don’t have to take 30 minutes break after 10 minutes of film, there’s actual filmography. Not so much of an ending, it’s not a cliffhanger, there is a resolution but it’s still a very abrupt “stop” more than proper closure.
It really IS Christmas, due to the fact this is actually watchable without a gunpoint incentive, even if there’s no reason to call it Dinosaur Hotel 3, this could actually pass as the first entry in the series (and should have been, in terms of quality), as the entire “escaped sleazy front man” subplot set up at the end of Dinosaur Hotel 2 is abandoned, there is the same actor, Marcus Massey (which btw played Owl in Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2, same production company), but he plays a different character altogether, one hat just happens to be credited as “The Front Man”, despite not being the same one from Dinosaur Hotel 2.
but then again there’s not even the same director or writer on board with this one, written and directed by Ben J. Williams…..if the film’s own credits can be trusted, since IMDB credits “Tyler James” as director and “Harry Boxley” as writer, could be pseudonyms for the same guy, since these are credited in various other low budget crapfests from Jagged Edge Productions, with The Lochness Horror, Tsunami Sharks, Spiders On A Plane, Mega Twister, Freddy’s Fridays, to name a random few from the MANY films they shat out.
so i guess my argument of these not being modern equivalents of the Carnosaur series was wrong, as with this one we’re basically bringing any attempt at a spanning storyline into the ground for the good ol’ fashioned way of making iterative trash about the same general theme or idea, and call them “sequels” by slapping numbers at the end of the title.
Even so, as pretty subpar and crap as it is, Dinosaur Hotel 3 is actually somewhat okay, again, all things considered, this is actually watchable, digestible, something for the pile of dino crap to watch for aficionados of the genre, the only one in the series i’d say it can be watched without bothering with the previous ones.
With some luck i won’t have to review “Dinosaur Hotel 4: Space-O-Saurus Dex” in a matter of one or two years, but we can only hold our hands and pray, pretty please.
Wise Cafe (International) 