Rating: B-
Dir: Mike Hermosa
Star: Mike Capes, David Shackelford, Caitlin McHugh, Sandy Martin
Right from the title, you can tell this is not a film to be taken entirely seriously. And you would be right, because this is largely a tongue-in-cheek homage to genre film. Mostly the work of Steven Spielberg – the entire thing takes place in “Spielburgh County”. Jurassic Park is obviously the big influence, but also E.T. The Extra Terrestrial , as well as other genre entries, such as Predator. The Tyler Corporation have a secret project which has resulted in the creation of the titular beast, until it escapes from the facility and begins killing local residents. Meanwhile, at a nearby diinosaur-themed park, paleontologist Dr. Grant Walker (Capes) has been reduced to doing dino-rap for the kiddie visitors.
He’s the first to realize a velociraptor is the perpetrator, though naturally, the local authorities are dismissive of this explanation. With the help of downtrodden security guard Denny Denielson (Shackelford) and old flame Amber (McHugh), Dr. Walker sets out to capture the creature, despite the problem of not being able to see it. Meanwhile, it’s ripping the heads off everyone it meets, to quote Crawford Tillenghast, like they were gingerbread men: the effects are by renowned artist Steve Johnson, and are firmly on point. Along the way, you’ll find yourself going, “Isn’t that…?” a number of times, as you spot faces in supporting roles who are recognizable from Office Space.(Richard Riehl), The Lord of the Rings (Sean Astin) and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The last deserves further description, with Martin playing local egg entrepreneur Henrietta McCluckskey. That’s pivotal because – as we all know – chickens are a velociraptor’s nearest living relative. We establish early on that the invisible raptor is horny, when it tries to screw the McCluckskey’s mascot, a giant chicken, leading to Grant’s big plan to catch it. This probably needs to be seen to be believed, and demonstrates the lunatic spirit of no-holds barred invention, which is the makers’ strongest suit. However, at one hundred and thirteen minutes, it is simply too long. Excising the entire saga of Denny’s past traumas would be a good start, because it’s basically little more than small penis jokes. The film is better than that.
Albeit for a loose definition of “better,” considering other elements of humour involve velociraptor semen, plus both dogs and kids becoming dino-poo. Yeah, this is definitely at the low-brow end of the comedy spectrum, with subtlety about as dead as the dinosaurs here. Which I’m perfectly fine with: this feels like a throwback to the Naked Gun era of comedy, a genre largely missing these days (I’m dreading next year’s Naked Gun reboot). The film references are a bit of a mixed bag: probably the glorious high is a remake of the scene from ET where this movie’s Elliott discovers the invisible creature (top), luring it into his house with candy. Doesn’t end quite as well for him. It’s largely breezy, referential and splattery fun: horror-comedy is tricky to get right, and this is as good an attempt as I’ve seen this year.