Director: Scott Jeffrey and Rebecca Matthews
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After missing out on several communication attempts, a woman and her family head out to a farmhouse owned by their reclusive brother to check on what happened to him, only to discover that an experiment has created several living dinosaurs forcing them to find a way to get away from the house alive.
Review:
This was quite a fun genre effort. Among the more enjoyable facets to this one is the intriguing and enjoyable setup that manages to play off quite nicely as for getting the group stranded at the house and into danger. As we’re given a glimpse of what he’s supposedly doing with his research and experiments at the beginning with keeping them locked up and away from the family requiring the rest of them to head up to check on him for his strange disappearance, everything is in order to keep them at the house long enough for the dinosaurs to emerge. With the revelations of what he’s doing and how they came to be, the film generates some intriguing aspects to get it started.
Once it gets this setup started, the film gets a lot to like with the dinosaur attacks which is the main point of the film. Focused mainly on the Rex getting some fun ambush sequences where it comes out of the wilderness to snap up victims in a messy fashion, these are rather fun while setting up the smaller-scale sequences of the group interacting with the Raptors more frequently in the house. The chasing featured in those scenes is handled well enough to generate some impressive suspense in the race to get away from the creatures and get to safety which is matched rather nicely with the initial arrival of the military to help save them. This mix of ambush sequences and action-packed stalking allows for a nice mix which is quite enjoyable here.
That carries over into the final half where there’s an enjoyable mix of action and even more additions to the story that ties everything together rather nicely. The dinos going through the commandoes which has some highly impressive attacks with the creatures getting some fun screentime, much like the finale out in the surrounding woods that introduces a few rather unexpected elements into the story. These new additions to the story, which flesh out the side-effects of the experiments and what can potentially happen to the dinosaurs in the future, this section of the film give this a lot to like that manage to hold the film up for the most part.
There isn’t a whole lot that holds this one down. One of the biggest drawbacks is the seemingly random inclusion of the small military force that’s designed to protect them only to end up being two ill-equipped commandoes, an insane leader, and a useless scientist. Based on the information given at that point in time, there’s no reason for that squad to be this small in terms of a rescue mission even if we later learn the true reason for their arrival which is even less logical. On top of that, there are the usually expected limitations with the dinos on such a small budget, ranging from some struggles with integration into the environment properly to proportion problems and repeating movements that highlight how unnatural they really are which is to be expected here but doesn’t come off as detrimental overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally enjoyable genre effort that manages to have a lot of fun action which moves nicely between stalking and ambush sequences that offer up some enjoyable factors to hold off the few small drawbacks that aren’t detrimental but hold it down. Give this a look if you’re a fan of the creative crew, like these kinds of cheesy creature features, or intrigued by this one while most others should heed caution with this one.
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