Director: Brendan Steere
Year: 2018
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After a cruel twist of fate, a broken priest travels to China to find himself only to become afflicted with a curse turning him into a deadly dinosaur, and when he meets up with a troubled prostitute sets out to use his gift to help others which lets a deadly ninja cult find out about him and bringing them into conflict.
Review:
This one was quite the blast of a B-movie. What works best here is the obvious and overt winks that play up how ludicrous and plainly over-the-top the storyline is. The concept involving a man grabbing onto a curse where he turns into a rampaging dinosaur capable of using those powers as the means to eliminate the crazed group of ninjas taking over the underground drug trade in the city should not be taken seriously in the slightest. The tongue-in-cheek nature of what’s going on here, from the forced seriousness of the musical cues to the effects work and even the good-standing of the film to wink at the camera with how serious the silliness really is adds a sense of fun to this one.
As well, the film’s short running time manages to constantly provide something funny and enjoyable to like. There’s so much goofy and nonsensical action centered around the implausibility of the dinosaur hunting people down when we really know it’s a priest doing this all along, as the scenes of him eating the pimp, running out of an exorcism or fighting off ninjas while as a human and dino version in absolutely hysterical combat sequences provide the cheesiness required to give this the kind of complete cheesy package provided here. On the whole, these are what manage to hold this one up.
There were a few minor flaws here. The main issue here is the complete lack of explaining anything simply for the sake of the joke. There’s something to be said for not being the point of the film, but the fact that no one’s looking for any of the missing victims including the loner left dismembered in a public park or the other one he attacked in the church leaving physical evidence of the encounter behind. Likewise, there’s nothing here to explain how the one victim who suffered a mortal wound in battle, visibly dying as a result, comes back later on without a scratch and no word as to how they survived. Granted, that’s just a part of the joke and not the intention here but some of this could’ve been explained or touched upon.
Likewise, the other real flaw here is the film’s overall cheesy tone that won’t be very appealing for some out there. There’s plenty of work here in the cheesy realm featuring barely-finished CGI effects, badly-rendered physical make-up on the wounds and scars and the entire battle between the dinosaur and the ninjas taking place while having the dinosaur featured in a children’s party costume performing rudimentary wrestling moves against the ninjas in a scene of pure jaw-dropping hilarity on the audacity to perform that on-camera. Still, thinking this is to be in any form of realistic manner is too cheesy to be included here which might take this to a point that’s not entirely worthwhile for some, holding this one down for the most part.
Overview: ***.5/5
A wholly over-the-top cheesy creature feature of the highest order, the fact that it dwells so highly into that realm might not be for some who prefer that kind of atmosphere even if it should be obvious with the title alone. If you’re sold by the title or appreciate the type of cheese present here will want to dive into this one absolutely with no other qualifications, and those that are turned off by anything mentioned in the positives should outright avoid or heed extreme caution.
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