Director: Jack Peter Mundy
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Dinosaurs
Plot:
Agreeing to partake in a special reality show, a young mother joins other women at a remote hotel where she’s subjected to a series of challenges to try to win money for her kids, but when they find themselves forced to survive the night against vicious dinosaurs must complete the game.
Review:
This was a rather fun and generally likable genre effort. Among its better features is the strong setup that provides quite a strong excuse and motivation for what’s going on. Using the idea of the reality show format to understand how the women are brought together, forced to survive in the scenario, and come upon the location’s dark secret being live dinosaurs that are trying to eat them one by one while they try to work together to survive the situation. The setup itself is somewhat cliched but manages to include enough about how the science works to create the creatures and place them there but also to include the series of tactics to keep them within the confines of the location while everything takes place around them is quite a fine way of keeping this one going along as they discover the stakes of the game.
This allows for a fantastic series of interactions and confrontations that take place in and around the house. With the usual suspects here in raptors, pterosaurs, and a Rex for good measure allowed to stomp through the place quite freely, there’s plenty of fun with the women struggling to accept they’re real and coming upon the truth in grisly fashion as we see the raptors stalking them inside the hallways and throughout the various interiors here resulting in encounters in the dining room and living room standing out quite nicely. As these allow the use of stalking scenes with the women and eventually the children trying to sneak away from the human-sized creatures, these are usually tense and somewhat chilling. At the same time, the massive Rex is kept as more of a shock ambush to prevent the final escape attempts from taking place as it’s used to take out those outside leaving some solid kill scenes along the way. Combined with its cheesy atmosphere and effects, these are enough to hold this one up.
The film does have some issues that hold it back. One of the main factors against it is the use of several unnecessary and overly complicated twists that don’t need to be there. This one worked incredibly well as a straightforward case of a group of women duped into being on a game show where they have to survive against vicious dinosaurs, but to include several unnecessary twists here for no reason involving one of the contestants being involved in the conspiracy with the bad guy controlling the games out of nowhere or to keep going around in circles about who’s playing the game or not. The decision to make one of the women involved makes no sense as it feels out of nowhere where she disappears from the film for a while to then appear in cahoots with the owner of the hotel as well which makes no sense, and the inability to keep the rules of the game in check makes for a disappointing enough time here overall. Alongside the expected and exceptionally cheesy effects of the goofy actions of the dinosaurs, these all manage to bring the film down.
Overview: ***/5
An enjoyably cheesy dinosaur film, this one comes off incredibly well for what it is although its few minor flaws do keep it down from the upper echelons of the genre. Those who are fans of this particular style of genre fare or the creative crew will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed caution with this one.
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