THE JURASSIC GAMES (2018)

THE JURASSIC GAMES (2018)

Tagline: Win the games. Win your freedom.

(Sci-Fi, Action, Don’t Trust Anyone) [R]

Note: This movie was not given a rating by the MPAA, but it would have landed an [R] for language. It is given a TV—MA on streaming services. 

I am not the judge, we are not the jury, but the game is the execution.

In this one, we are taken to the near future where 10 death row inmates are selected for a virtual reality gameshow where they are put into a world full of dinosaurs. If they are killed in the game, they are killed via lethal injection in real life. The winner is allowed to have their freedom. 

First off, this movie’s concept is actually pretty fantastic. I remember watching THE HUNGER GAMES and wishing that movie had more non-human threats. We did get the mutt dog mutations and the tracker jackers, but that film might have been even better with some dinosaurs or other creatures. The issue here is that High Octane Pictures operating budget is probably similar to THE ASYLUM’s at least for this movie, so the CGI always suffers in those cases. As such, the dinosaurs look like what you would see in a creative Campbell’s soup commercial rather than a high production like THE HUNGER GAMES. 

One major issue I had with this, is that we are given 10 death row characters so really by the end, we are only rooting for one of them. At least in THE HUNGER GAMES, everyone with a caring bone in their body wanted Rue, Peeta, and Katniss at the very least to survive. In this thing, it takes a while to realize anyone is actually worth rooting for and it ends up being one person. Because of that a lot of the dialog is just everyone being jerks to one another even in cases where working together against prehistoric meat-eating death machines would have helped. 

Acting wise this actually isn’t all bad. Katie Burgess (GUARDIANS OF TIME) can actually act and she is very convincing as one of the worst people you would ever want to meet in this film named Joy of all names. Tiger Sheu (MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM) has his moments as Ren in this. He is the only other person in the film at least pretending to be nice. Adam Hampton (GREMLIN) is the protagonist Tucker and I actually liked his character. Adam’s acting is spot on. Ryan Merriman (FINAL DESTINATION 3) does a good job as the game shows announcer just referred to as “The Host”. I thought the idea to throw him in a dinosaur head mask here and there also gave this thing some style points.

I didn’t like that one of the characters was a cannibal. Even though this one doesn’t get too gory with that, I hate all things cannibal related in general. Anytime that shows up in a film, it’s just kind of like “Why. Why are we doing this of all things?” Having said that, this is quite a bit better overall than I expected and I think that is why it’s kind of middle of the road for most people. Not many people saying it will blow your mind, and not many people saying it’s the toilet at a burned-down Chucky Cheese. 

I am in that boat. This is actually a pretty good attempt for a B-movie. To date, this is maybe the 3rd or 4th High Octane Pictures film I have reviewed, so I may end up checking out more at some point.  Overall the dialog and characters hurt this one, but it is watchable. This thing gets a 3 out of 7. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF HIGH OCTANE PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.