Joey
Welcome to ‘Jurassic Park’, no wait, that’s not right. Let’s try this again. Welcome to ‘Jurassic Hunt’. A movie that asks what if you could kill them for sport instead of just seeing the dinosaurs.
‘Jurassic Hunt’ wastes little time introducing our intrepid hunters which include Parker (Courtney Loggins), Valentine (Tarkan Dospil), Torres (Ruben Pla), Bullock (Spencer C. Warren), Tramp (Dan Sinclair), Sergei (Benjamin Watt), Blackhawk (Antuone Torbert), and a bunch of others that don’t matter because they will all be dead soon. All of which have come to an unknown location for the opportunity to hunt creatures that went extinct 65 million years ago. Creatures that have now been brought back through the wonders of, well, come to think of it, it’s never explained how they achieved this.
The writers of ‘Jurassic Hunt’ don’t stop to take the time to explain this. Instead, like everything else about this movie, they count on the fact that you’ve seen ‘Jurassic Park’, and can carry all your knowledge over from that. They do, however, take the time to have park manager Lindon (Joston Theney) stop to yell at a couple of penned dilophosaurus to start mating, so you get that. Because let’s face it, the creators of this film figure you didn’t come here for the science. No, you came to see killer dinosaurs.
Back out on the unknown landscape, something soon goes wrong for our hunters, as on their first night, a pack of raptors attacks the camp, killing their guide and five members of the group.
Now it’s be expected that the CGI for the dinosaurs is not going to be blockbuster quality, but all things considered, the effects turned out pretty decent for what they most likely had to work with. When the dinosaurs attacked, however, the graphics started to become a factor. To make up for this, the camera is often sprayed with CGI blood to hide the carnage.
‘Jurassic Hunt’ continues to deliver on the dinosaur mayhem for the first act of the film, as our hunters are forced to have to continue to fight for their lives against these prehistoric predators.
In the second half of ‘Jurassic Hunt’, however, the pace slows as the focus shifts from the predators to the prey. During this time, the film works to explain Parker’s real motivation for coming on this adventure, establish the lengths Lindon will go to stop her and set up a romance between Parker and Valentine. Many key plot elements are introduced during this time, including the use of dinosaur hormones, which comes into play in the final act.
The film’s funniest moment also comes during this time, when the fearless Bullock stands off against a T-Rex armed with only a spear.
In the final act of the film, we see our remaining hunters part ways, as each team member must make a heroic stand to help Parker expose the secrets of Jurassic Hunt. We also see the return of the dinosaurs in a big way when thanks to the dinosaur hormones, we get a bloody CGI massacre of Jurassic Hunt soldiers.
This all leads to our showdown between Parker and Lindon where it is determined who is the hunter, and who is the hunted.
‘Jurassic Hunt’ is the newest film by Hank Braxtan. The same mind brought us a genetically modified polar bear in ‘Unnatural’, a giant mutating snake monster in ‘Snake Outta Compton’, and a dragon in ‘Dragon Soldiers’. Braxtan has an infatuation for making monster movies, and this passion is what makes ‘Jurassic Hunt’ a decent dinosaur movie.
The dinosaur CGI is beyond anything you will get from an Asylum film. The film’s trouble comes from the interaction between man and beast mentioned above. This results in the overly utilized tactic of dousing the camera in CGI blood, which happens too often. Practical effects are used at times, but only to display the after-effects of the dinosaur attacks.
The acting in the film is better than it should be, considering the fact the cast are not names you’re likely to be familiar with.
On a scale of 1-5 stars, I give this movie 2.5 stars.
‘Jurassic Hunt’ is a bad movie, but it’s a good, bad movie. Most films outside of ‘Jurassic Park’ or ‘Jurassic World’ rarely manage to be anything spectacular, but this movie manages to stand out amongst the ever-growing straight-to-video dinosaur catalog of films.
‘Jurassic Hunt’ stars Courtney Loggins as Parker, Tarkan Dospil as Valentine, Ruben Pla as Torres, Joston Theney as Lindon, Motown Maurice as Rabbit, Dan Sinclair as Tramp, Benjamin Watt as Sergei, Antuone Torbert as Blackhawk, Butch McCain as Corrigan, Heath C. Heine as Riggs, Spencer C. Warren as Bullock, and J. Michael Weiss as Marko.
