New Release Wall #29 - The Jurassic Dead

After the fun of The Jurassic Games, we decided to try out The Jurassic Dead.

This was a poor idea.

Russ's notes:

I love he score in the opening sequence; it feels like Fletch or something, but with more baseline.

What’s with the bright green serum? Is this Cartel 2045?

The acting and camera work her are not at a professional level. like, this isn’t Cartel or Jurassic Games, where it’s at that level with some quirks.

…He didn’t even inject the serum! Just dribbled it on the skin? What’s the point of putting it in a syringe?

The T-rex in the first sequence looks convincingly like puppetry. Even if when it’s close to the car it is OBVIOUSLY NOT CLOSE TO THE CAR

“Mrs. Dr. Borge” has so much packed into it. First of all, isn’t she too old and presumably too smart for that? Second, she doesn’t know his first name? SHE’S IN COLLEGE.

I want to know the backstory of his bowtie

“I am not here to debate, Im here to educate,” says the guy who has just been monologuing about the meaning of life since the class started.

…Wait, he’s bringing dead cats back to life in what is clearly a community college classroom?

“It takes quite a bit to work,” except that it didn’t take much to work on the T-rex, especially given its relative size.

The acting in this movie is basically like the fake soap opera in TWIN PEAKS.

There is waaaaay too much green screen in this movie. I get that they can’t afford any sets, but it looks awful.

I don’t know that there has ever been a truly good film that had an expository crawl 12 minutes in. I’m also not crazy about “one lived — this is his story.”

This guy who is yelling at his co-worker about breaking the law and looking like shitheads? He is up on one foot completely out of the driver’s seat and looking nowhere near the road.

Roxy has the worst hair/wig I’ve seen in a while.

NOBODY IN THIS MOVIE LOOKS AT THE ROAD.

I’m glad that we got a zombie dinosaur in the first 5 minutes because it feels like forever until anything resembling a plot happens.

…Wait, she ACTUALLY has a Game Boy?

I like how they code “geek” as “pretty girl with an R2D2 backpack.”

The redneck who has a tantrum and stomps his hat is just a protracted scene that is not at all funny.

“How did you get past HR?” says the guy who then scratches his temple with the barrel of a gun.

I doni’t understand the weird film stock effects used when they have the THE RIGHT STUFF shot. It’s like, after having a text crawl 12 minutes in, they decided they needed an ‘80s TV series opening credits 20 minutes in.

There is a truly awful bit of ADR when the younger sister says “what kind of structure is it?” when they inexplicably stop in the desert.

Gunner looks and acts like Rick Derris from Clerks. But, y’know. There’s a whole movie of him.

“This could be the apocalypse” the dude says with absolutely no reason to believe it at all.

Why is “Oh my God, is that a vulture?” a runner in this movie?

I love the idea that the d-bag football guy scoffs at Metal Gear Solid.

Also: is Metal Gear Solid still something that resonates with college kids?

31 minutes before the end of JURASSIC DEAD, we finally have our main characters interacting with a dinosaur.

Remember in Jurassic Games, when we talked about needing a moment where they had some kind of tongue-in-cheek reference to JP tropes? Here we have the giant metal box.

I don’t think any geek in the world uses “Zuckerberg” instead of “Einstein” to sarcastically refer to genius.

Okay, so why would Gunnar ever shoot for center mass when he knows that the guys are likely military.

My favorite character in the movie is guy who just grabs one of the mains and yells “shut up” in his ear.

…Wait, this dude thinks we need zombie dinosaurs for America to destroy itself? Maybe the timeline issues with the gameboy are just because the movie was legitimately written before Trump.

Okay so there is a serious problem with the dinosaur reveal.

The fact that they did not construct the set into which they introduced the dinosaur means that they ended up using green screen to approximate it. They did not, however, adjust for the apparent size of the beast. This means the message sent when we get the close-up of the foot is significantly different from the one sent when we get a full-body shot of the Rex.

There’s a stretch of this movie where the Duke Nukem douchebag is suddenly our hero. And WTF?

I feel like the zombie thing doesn’t contribute much to the dinosaur story.

Our mad scientist gives off a weird Anakin Skywalker at death vibe.

The shot of them “shooting down the door” is literally some of the worst CG I have seen this side of the Corman Fantastic Four.

I don’t like zombies who talk, and it just contributes to the “the zombie aspect of this doesn’t feel important” thing.

I will say that at least the shitty fake blood spatter when they slice the conspiracy theory guy’s throat is visually engaging and doesn’t look like generic CG crud.

Even the closing credits of this movie are basically just throwing everything at the wall.