Main cast: Courtney Loggins (Parker), Ruben Pla (Torres), Tarkan Dospil (Valentine), Joston Theney (Lindon), Dan Sinclair (Tramp), Benjamin Watt (Sergei), Antuone Torbert (Blackhawk), Butch McCain (Corrigan), Heath C Heine (Riggs), Spencer C Warthen (Bullock), J Michael Weiss (Marko), and Motown Maurice (Rabbit)
Director: Hank Braxtan

Oh, I know what I am getting into with Jurassic Hunt: a low budget flick designed to cash in on the dinosaur movie fad. One thing that catches me by surprise about this one, though, is how lovingly rendered the dinosaurs are. Detailed, gorgeous, and well animated, these CGI dinosaurs have me wondering whether they were, er, borrowed assets from some other dinosaur movie or documentary; that or some talented person has been tricked or blackmailed into working on this movie for cheap.

Like its title would tell anyone, this one is about hunting dinosaurs like everyone is in a safari. Jurassic Hunt is owned and managed by the flamboyant Lindon, and for a high price, people can come here to hunt dinosaurs to their hearts’ content. They also are given the choice of any and every weapon in the arsenal. After all, as Lindon puts it, they can have all weapons from Rambo: First Blood to Last Blood because these people have paid for them!

So, this movie sees a bunch big game hunters, some of them also influencers on social media and hence deserve to be dinosaur chow, taking part in the latest dinosaur-hunting party. They can kill anything that’s considered okay to be killed in the 24 hours they are given, and they also have to wear trackers to allow Lindon and his men to make sure they know where these hunters are at any time.

The sole woman, Parker, is tough and walks the talk, while she’s surrounded by mostly boorish men whose antics only telegraph super hard and early that Parker is definitely the final girl. That she asks for a tranquilizer gun while others just want to bang-bang-bang everything… oh yes, final girl material, definitely.

Then, the dinosaurs attack, and Parker stubbornly refuses to wield a weapon that can kill anything. She gets into trouble constantly because of this, and has to be rescued several times by Valentine, the only decent (and coincidentally enough, most shaggable) bloke of the bunch, and she will thank him by screeching that she doesn’t need his help.

Of course, she’s obviously not a big game hunter, but the fact that she is stupidly against killing things even in self-defense… ugh. I mean, it’s very easy for her to act high and mighty as well as better than everyone else, when she has other people save her or do the dirty work for her.

So yes, the movie wants a final girl, and it thinks this unlikable twit is the ideal final girl.

Parker does get a little better later on, but that means she’s now nagging and scolding the others instead of constantly needing rescue.

On the bright side, the dinosaurs (of which there is only one type, likely because one CGI render is all they can afford) do their thing well. There is no shortage of mayhem here.

Unfortunately, it’s also pretty clear that the dinosaurs do not exist in the same scene as the actors, as the cast members frequently look or react to these dinosaurs in the wrong way—for example, looking at the wrong direction or, my favorite, cutting at where the abdomen should be to extract a dinosaur claw.

This is also a movie with supposedly dedicated and infamous big game hunters that, for some inexplicable reason, can’t detect a big lizard-thing charging at them until the dinosaur is right behind them. Maybe these are ninja dinosaurs, I don’t know.

Also, the dinosaurs are so well-rendered that they are always shinier, brighter than everything else in a particular scene. It’s very obvious these are CGIs inserted during post-production because these dinosaurs play by the rules of lighting that are completely different from everything and everyone else in the movie.

I can overlook the technical issues of this movie if the story and cast had been good enough to deliver a fun film, but sadly, the script is generic as can be and the final girl alternates between being useless and being obnoxious.

Chalk Jurassic Hunt up as the odd example of a low budget flick that has a below average cast and story, only to be elevated by its technical accomplishments. I’m not sure that the nicely done dinosaurs are a good enough reason to waste time on this thing, though. I’m sure there are some documentaries on dinosaurs out there with equally nice or better dinosaur CGIs!

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