Set in a not too distant future, The Jurassic Games (the latest film to aim for the Sharknado crown of best ‘crap-tastic’ flick) paints a future in which death row convicts are forced to compete in a virtual reality game that is televised on TV. In the game, they must fight against each other, oh, and also hordes of prehistoric dinosaurs with a taste for human flesh. If they die in the game, they die in real life. It’s the Jurassic Park/Running Man/Hunger Games cross-over you never knew you wanted and will want to give back straight away.
I would be lying if I said that the concept didn’t intrigue me. It is undoubtedly the most entertaining aspect of this creaky, cheesy flick. Its gonzo enough to scratch a particular B-movie itch that we all feel from time to time. Occasionally, it can make good on this concept, particularly when it aims to go full Verhoeven in its approach to satirising consumerism. These moments, however, are brief and very much feel like they’re ripped right out of Robocop with little in the way of imagination.
You don’t go into a film like The Jurassic Games expecting blockbuster levels of production values or good performances. These sort of films can offer a means of entertainment in terms of how bad, how silly and how ridiculous they are. The Jurassic Games never quite lives up to its crap-tacular potential, often choosing to focus on a boring and poe-faced plotline involving a contestant on the show who may have been wrongly convicted. Some of the contestants prove more memorable than others, but for the large part, they are thinly-sketched stereotypes (and some are barely around long enough for you to remember their names).
But perhaps The Jurassic Games biggest sin is its lack of Dino-action. For a film with such a bonkers premise, it should go all in on the Dino’s, no matter how cheap they look. But for a large part of the film, you’ll find yourself quoting Jurassic Park’s Dr. Ian Malcolm by asking ‘now, eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your dinosaur movie, right?’ The scenes featuring the Dino’s themselves lack that certain spark that films like Sharknado seem to be able to generate, and that comes down to a lack of imagination in the execution.
The Jurassic Games is a let-down even in regards to movies of its ilk. It borrows ideas and reapplies them with little in the way of conviction and simply doesn’t have enough imagination behind it to really get fun and dumb with its admittedly enticing concept. You’ll probably even find yourself para-phrasing Dr. Malcolm again once you get to the end of it; ‘that was one big pile of shit.’
The Jurassic Games in out now on UK DVD.
