REVIEW: THE DINOSAUR EXPERIMENT

As the opening credits roll on the film you're about to watch and review, and you find yourself saying, "Well, at least Lorenzo Lamas is in this," you know you're in trouble. If, from the earliest onset, you get a gut feeling that you're about to spend 90 minutes undergoing cinematic mediocrity, and you consider the presence of the guy from "Renegade" to be a positive, well, Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

A group of strangers find themselves all stranded at a road-side diner/gas station (conveniently all within minutes of each other) when the old weird hick guy/scientist who lives in town shits the bed and allows his experimental velociraptors to escape. The strangers must band together to fight off the dinosaurs all whilst trying to stay awake in their own film.

Hold onto your butts.

A horror/comedy hybrid that contains neither horror nor comedy, The Dinosaur Experiment attempts to be a strange assemblage of Jurassic Park, Tremors, The Hangover, and something Roger Corman might have produced in between Ensures. The film features a collection of flat, bored performances meshed with over-the-top, scenery-chewing, kitchen sink performances, all making for a wildly uneven experience. Every line of dialogue designed to elicit a laugh instead induces a groan, and every character archetype is not only present and accounted for, but the subtle approach to their archetypal construction is turned down to negative 11. 

"If you're gonna have a horny frat-boy character, he should be, like, at least twice as horny," this film screamed in my face.

What you've got here, ultimately, are a random hodgepodge of characters, half of them pretty girls clad in the skimpiest costumes possible (but don't worry it makes sense in the context of the film LOL) wandering from one set-piece to the other so their arms/heads/hair can get ripped off. There's even a funny black pimp character, whose every line is automatically funny because he's got a purple suit on and is wearing an obviously fake wig. (He dies on the toilet just like that dude from that other, better movie about dinosaurs made by that guy who produced Real Steal.)

(Oh, and: Spoiler.)

hu·mor ˈ(h)yo͞omər/ - (noun)
1. the quality of being amusing or comic, esp. as expressed in literature or speech.
"his tales are full of humor"

The visual effects are pretty decent, considering the budget on this project was obviously quite low, and I'm actually quite pleased to see an attempt at keeping the under-explored dinosaur horror sub-genre at the very least active. The problem is that's not nearly enough to even so much as recommend this as a one-night rental.

Experience filmmaking 15 minutes in the making: The Dinosaur Experiment.  

But from here it looks like a six-foot turkey.

 

REVIEW: HAZMAT

One might think that the slasher formula has been done to death, and maybe it has. Having just watched (out of morbid curiosity) Texas Chainsaw 3D, I remarked to a friend during the first twenty minutes, “Critics are absolutely right to disrespect the horror genre when this is the kind of output that filmmakers and studios are giving us.” And I still feel that way. If you’re going to go back to the same well, whether it be the same tired character of Leatherface, or the same tired well of “get kids, put them in location, let loose the bad shit,” for the love of Tobe Hooper, please do something the least bit original, or clever, or hell, just inject a bit of life into it. More often than not, studios are proving that they are simply not up to this challenge, but yet it’s the smaller productions that are.

“Scary Antics,” a riff on the real life show “Scare Tactics,” (which, last time I looked, was hosted by Tracy Morgan), isn’t doing so well. Despite having made it to its third season, the network is keen to pull the plug, leaving its creator David (Todd Bruno, the love child of Jason Bateman and…Jason Bateman) struggling to find a way to keep it afloat.  Then you’ve got co-creator/make-up girl Brenda (Aniela McGuiness) wanting to leave the show behind just as much as the studio wants to kill it, her excuse being professional growth, but really, because David probably won’t commit to her ever since they were, are, or had, a thing. And meanwhile, David’s trying to produce an episode in which a kid named Adam (Reggie Peters) is setting it up for himself and his friend Jacob (Norbert Velez) to be on "Scary Antics" in an effort to get Jacob, who became obsessed with the paranormal following his father’s death, to snap the fuck out of it and be Adam's BFF again. With hidden cameras around nearly every turn, the “skit” begins – that of Jacob leading his friends around an old abandoned factory where many years earlier a fire had broke out and killed everyone. Convinced the place is haunted, Adam allows Jacob to guide them through and tell them his ghost stories, knowing that the “antics” portion of the show will be kicking in soon.

And then Murphy’s Law happens.

Conceptually, HazMat is very similar to 2001’s Halloween: Resurrection, but that’s about where the similarities end, because while Halloween: Resurrection is a giant piece of cinematic shit, HazMat is not. I admit that I was ready to write off HazMat from minute one, just because I’m embittered and cynical, and based on the synopsis, I said, “Oh boy – here we go again.” But as HazMat played on, I found myself actively engaged in the events unfolding. The ensemble cast was solid, at the very least, though there were a couple performances here and there not entirely ready for prime-time.  And I was pleased to see actual thought had been put into the script. Attempts at drama and development are present and accounted for, though I’m not entirely sure every character arc was ultimately fulfilled. I especially appreciated every attempt at closing a potential plot hole was made. ("Why don't they just use their cell phones to call for help?"  "Why don't they just wait it out, knowing the network will eventually send out the police of their crew doesn't return?")

And can I just say, despite my earlier condemnation regarding the asphyxiation of the slasher genre, that a part of me is secretly pleased movie maniacs are still finding new costumes and masks to put on before separating heads and limbs from torsos? There’s something about that I  find strangely comforting. It harkens back to a similar time in the genre when filmmakers just wanted to have a bit of fun, gimmicky and played out though it may have been.

Triple threat Lou Simon (writer/director/producer) has done a fine job making something out of nothing. The shooting location lends as much as it can, despite it having been a much smaller set than the film lets on. The film isn’t terribly violent, as most of the deaths are obscured by quick cutaways before we cut back to see the damage left by the maniac’s blade, though we do get a money shot or two, and they are pretty excellent. Since we focus on a small group of characters, more time is spent with them, and some of them last longer than you might suspect.

No one ever wants to watch the credits roll on a film and say, “That was terrible,” because all that equates to is having wasted 90 minutes of your life, so while it’s obviously preferable to think the opposite, it can be even more rewarding when a film comes along that defies nearly all of your expectations.

HazMat will be available on DVD come April 1.