The Dinosaur Project (2012)

I'm kind of getting sick of all the found footage films now. Yes, 'Cannibal Holocaust' is the earliest film I remember, but it was 'Cloverfield' that popularised it. And since then we've had, I don't know, at least five or six found footage films a year.

And so we have 'The Dinosaur Project', what is effectively the 'Troll Hunter' of this year; it looks interesting, I really wanted to see it, and no cinema near me was playing it. The film was only on show at Empire chain cinemas...and I haven't a clue where the nearest one of those is. I got it on DVD a week after its release.

'The Dinosaur Project', you guessed it, takes place when a group of locals in the Congo find a rucksack in the water with film footage of The Dinosaur Project group, who had gone into the Congo to investigate what appears to be a dinosaur siting. Like the Loch Ness monster. Upon a Pterodactyl flying into the helicopter's propellers ('How?' comes to mind), the helicopter crashes and our explorers find themselves trying to survive in a dinosaur infested land.

Okay, first of all, the film starts off with the typical message all found footage films have now, that the footage has not been tampered with in anyway. Which is weird seeing as how the footage has all been edited together, including a clip from Youtube. But okay, I know you're trying to maintain the illusion movie, but, you're about dinosaurs. You're about living, breathing dinosaurs that survived whatever extinction level event befell the others. So these effects for the dinosaurs had better be...

Oh my God.

Yeah, these effects really put the dinosaurs from 'Jurassic Park', a film that is nineteen years old to shame.

Let's just start with that shall we. The effects for the dinosaurs, they can actually be pretty good. If the dinosaur in question is small, like...whatever Crypto's species is (It appears to be a descendant of the same dinosaur that killed Dennis in 'Jurassic Park'), then the dinosaur actually looks really good. Unless it's the...bat-like dinosaurs that attacked the camp, or Crypto's mummy and daddy, they just looked awful, I've seen better graphics in video games. Still. Better than the two headed shark.

Apart from that, there really isn't anything bad to say. The plot has pretty much been used time and time again, just with different circumstances, an example being 'Cannibal Ferox'; just replace 'cannibals' with 'dinosaurs'. But the story was actually well thought out. There is a sub-plot involving Luke (Matt Kane) and his father Jonathan (Richard Dillane) having difficulties...which is basically resolved at one point and it doesn't go into much depth other than they don't like each other.

Okay, so there are other bad things in this, I won't lie and say there aren't. The acting, I suppose for what it is, it's actually pretty...adequate. Yes the acting isn't that great, with quite a few lines being forced and contrived, but in all honesty, it does look like the actors and actresses did the best they could with what they had. It isn't horrendous, but I wouldn't expect soap operas to have this sort of acting.

Speaking of soap operas, this film might as well be one. It's full of cliches, like the father and son relationship, the rebellious yet genius son, and the best friend who turns out to be a dick. But in all fairness the characters themselves are alright, and a couple of them do have their stand alone brilliant moments which show how badass they are. However, I did not like Amara (Abena Ayivor). Ayivor isn't that great an actress, the character is self-righteous, constantly moans about how it isn't safe, and at one point when a character is in grave danger, she couldn't give a shit.

In all honesty, this isn't a bad film, but it should have been better. The story, the acting, the characters are all okay, while the effects are mix and match mainly due to the low budget. The problem is that they aren't good. The problem is the script. The flow is awful, there is horrible dialogue, and the film is full of cliches. The script and the direction the film takes, well, it holds the film back. It's an okay film, but it's just there. It isn't that spectacular, it's just something that you can put on the shelf. Believe me, it's worth the one watch, it is fairly entertaining, but it doesn't achieve its potential.

2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

Sunday 16th March 2012 - Jack and Jill review: "if it isn't the worst film I see this year, something went terrible wrong".
Sunday 22nd April 2012 - Battleship review: "Something went terribly wrong. Oh God yeah! This film is WORST than Adam Sandler getting dressed in drag!"
Thursday 22nd November 2012 - 2-Headed Shark Attack review: SOMETHING ELSE WENT TERRIBLY WRONG!

My lord I did not think I'd be saying that again, even if it was an Asylum production. But this film! Anyway, here a Semester at Sea (On what appears to be a fishing boat, and the students haven't brought any clothes apart from bikinis on something that apparently takes, at least, weeks) are doing something, I don't know, they're studying tanning. However a dead shark somehow gets sucked into the propeller of the boat, rendering it useless. The blood from the shark however attracts the mutant two-headed shark, and it begins hunting these idiots down.

And boy, what a crappy looking shark it is. Seriously, most of the time when we see it, it looks so fake. It either looks like the shark is from a Playstation One video game, or it looks like it was made from clay. And that goes for the normal sharks as well. Hell, half the time the two-headed shark DOES look normal. Yeah, some of the time the shark appears with ONE head! Even when there's a valid excuse as to why the shark should have only one head and should have a big gaping hole, it just appears to be a normal one-headed shark.

I love how we can see here the shark's teeth bending. Particularly around the person they're suppose to be eating.

With that out of the way, the rest of the film is still crap! I could see the plot kind of working, but the problem is that the film feels padded and yet not padded at all. It doesn't take a breather for the audience to absorb what they just saw. And even if you do follow what it going on, most of the time when the action occurs, the film does the most awkward editing ever. It tends to cut to another shot, normally the students doing the worse scream acting possible, then back to the original shot but repeated. It wouldn't be so bad, but I swear these shots only last half a second, and the film cuts between them multiple times. I watched this film, had to rewind bits and pieces, and still felt I didn't understand what happened half the time.

The acting. What acting?! I suppose I can say that Brooke Hogan and Charlie O'Connell were better than average, but everyone else? Jesus Christ I have rarely seen worse acting. Whenever something bad happens, the students look like they didn't give a crap, Hell they look like they'd give a better reaction if they broke a nail. You know what? Every poster/DVD cover I've seen for this lists Carmen Electra as the top billing name, and yet this might as well be Where's Wally; just replaced Wally with Carmen and think of it as a movie version.

But really, this is bad even by Asylum standards. Awful acting, terrible effects, bizarre plot holes, bad plot, and the worse editing I've ever seen. It just seemed more of an excuse to see a whole bunch of girls in bikinis. And two girls make out a bit. There isn't much else to comment on because the film was just too confusing to follow besides the basic plot; a shark goes after people. Really, it's one of the worst films of 2012.

Strippers Vs. Werewolves (2012)

Yes, it's another Strippers verses a supernatural entity film, except we move from zombies to werewolves. I am actually expecting Strippers vs. Vampires to come in 2013, followed by Strippers vs. Sauron in 2014.

Here the plot starts with Mickey (Played for some reason by Martin Kemp, famous for actually having a career past Eastenders) in a strip club where he...um...transforms into a werewolf and is killed by Justice (Adele Silva) the stripper. Mickey's pack, led by Ferris (Billy Murray) and includes Justice's boyfriend Scott (Martin Compston), find out about Mickey's demise and set about finding those responsible with the aim to rip their throats out.

Now, when I first watched this, I really didn't like it. My mate really didn't like, he had fallen asleep partway through the third act. I basically thought that since 'Zombies vs. Strippers' was so awesome, that this would be too. And after watching it, I remembered that 'Zombies vs. Strippers' was only good because it had Johnny 'Backhand' Vegas in it. This film has no worthy substitute. In all honesty I found myself rooting for the werewolves more than the strippers, and that's pretty much because of Compston and Murray; Murray makes his character similar to those you'd find in Guy Ritchie's gang films, and Compston was pretty much the best actor in this.

That's not to say that the acting is great, it's basically the sort you'd find in a soap drama. Then again you do have former Eastenders actor Martin Kemp, as well as Hollyoaks star Ali Bastian. Then there's Barbara Nedeljakova whose only major acting credits are 'Hostel' and 'Hostel 2', and then there's the people who haven't acted  in anything before this, like popular Nuts magazine model Lucy Pinder, and Charlie Bond (Okay she starred in a short before this...which as far as I'm aware no-one has ever seen anyway).

So it seems weird when you see these individuals interact with good experienced actors. And even they seem to be doing the bare minimum, I mean, this films has Billy Murray, Alan Ford, and...Robert Englund? Jesus Christ Robert, first 'Zombie Strippers' now this? You had a career! Stop appearing in crap! Well, at least this will be the last time I see him in a film like this...right?

In all honesty though, I wanted to follow Sinclair (Simon Phillips) in this film. Sinclair is a Van Helsing character, he's an expert on everything supernatural. Except werewolves. He does dump Nedeljakova's character, why I don't know, something about feeling that he's not good enough for her. I can only guess he saw the Hostel films. But in all honesty, I just preferred his character over the strippers. His story appears more interesting, his character appears more interesting, basically I wanted to watch him.

The effects. Oh boy the effects. It looked like the effects were done on Microsoft movie maker. These include some pretty shoddy explosions, and a flame effect which looked like it was photoshopped in. I will give the film one thing, the make-up for the werewolves actually look really good.

In conclusion, this film is a huge disappointment. It's filled with soap opera acting, the effects are virtual nonexistent, the plot takes forever to move on, and the characters are outshone by another character who is in the film for about ten minutes altogether. Hell, the acting is outshone by Robert Englund, and HE'S in this film for probably three minutes.

And you want to know what's even worse, I fancied Ali Bastian before this. I saw her in Hollyoaks (Back when I watched it anyway), I saw her in one or two episodes of Strictly Come Dancing, and yet it's the film where she is shown in her lingerie which puts me off her. How does that happen?!

But, bizarrely, I've now watched this multiple times, I've watched it once with my mate Ryan, watched it again with the Curator of Movie Vault 666, and I watched it a couple more times for this review. And you know what? It's growing on me. Yeah I admit that this is a bad film but for some reason the more I watch it the more I enjoy it, heck I find it funnier then the last viewing. I don't think it will happen for anyone else, but it happened for me. Basically, watch while drunk with mates.

By the way when I said I was expecting 'Strippers vs. Vampires' in 2013, I was joking. That was a joke. Guess what?

It's apparently in the works! Apparently it's in the planning stage.