Triassic Attack

I was expecting a great Syfy movie; my family would sit down, watch it, enjoy it, and laugh at the guilty pleasure with it's clever effects throughout. However, this just made me feel like fast-forwarding the entire show with my DVR remote. Here's why:

The story was just boring; it felt like that it could have sped up a little bit. At least they did a flashback to show how the events came about, but mostly, the writers used all these unnecessary pauses and dialog for filler that just made the movie seem longer. If they were to cut out those certain scenes or shorten them, the movie could have made a solid hour and I would have enjoyed it much better.

The characters, mostly between the main characters--Jake and Emma--were just irritating and painstakingly annoying. As before, the writers just used filler techniques in situations with dialog or pauses. Surprisingly, the other characters that were further introduced were slightly better, but the pacing felt unbalanced. The acting was off- balance; some scenes looked like they were a complete joke--not funny, some were so overdone that they seemed to last too long.

The effects were okay some of the time, but mostly, they were the cheapest graphics ever put into a Syfy movie--more cheap than the other movies. In fact, they were so cheap that it made the other effects from other Syfy movies, as well as low-rated universal productions, appear ten times as good.

Lastly, the concepts of the movie: dull and unrealistic. In fact, one scene actually felt uncomfortable and very unusual and it lasted for about a minute. Another one was a ritual ceremony that caused it to magically rain from the sky. The fact that dinosaur skeletons are able to roar without the required organs, and fly without any muscles, is beyond ridiculous.

As for consistency, Syfy premiered the movie Jurassic Park, a more successful spin-off of realistic dinosaurs, directed by Steven Spielberg, before this movie aired. I assume that it tried to keep us interested in dinosaurs, just without the whole body structure, but that plan failed miserably.

Overall, this is one of the worst Syfy movies that was ever made in the history of this channel.

I rarely rip on the acting performances in creature features from the SyFy Channel, but Jesus H. Christ. Where the hell did they find all these people? A project like "Triassic Attack" isn't going to attract the cream of the crop, but this cast goes well below the minimum requirements. For one thing: nobody in this quiet, rural American town manages to hide their British accent. For another, the inevitable comic relief character has the comedic timing of an orphanage fire. The Native American character does seem to be pulled straight from an SNL sketch, but I think those scenes are supposed to be taken seriously. The effects are never that good in SyFy movies, but they are especially bad here. These dinosaur skeletons seemed very difficult to animate, they move in a really unnatural way. There are several scenes where we get dangerously close to "Birdemic" territory. Overall though, the most bothersome thing about this movie is that it just doesn't give the audience what it wants. All you want to see is dinosaurs eating people, and it barely has any of that. And on the rare occasions you do see it, it appears to be completely bloodless because adding CGI blood is more work. Not even good for a laugh.

I mean I don't know what people are expecting. It's not like you have to pay to watch this or something. There's a lot worse sci-fi movies on the sci-fi channel and elsewhere and this really isn't that terrible. I mean it's a zombie dino movie. And yeah the young woman playing the university professor is far too hot and it's got Amelia Clark in it as the daughter of the professor and the sheriff who are of course having marital issues and all but divorced, a typical sort of backplot. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie involving a homicidal dinosaur skeletons conjured up accidentally by an American Indian. But hey all in all, it's not much more improbable than bringing them back to life with DNA preserved in mosquitoes covered with amber. The acting is fair and once you get over the premise the story holds together and if predictable it's still a bit of fun!

Three people are running away from an unseen horror. They reach a water tower. Inside, the sheriff insists a man and a woman climb to relative safety, then he opens the water tower door. Look Out! …an animated dinosaur skeleton is revealed as the monster in pursuit… We then flashback "24 hours earlier," to discover what led us here… Three skeletal dinosaurs became "animated" during an incident in an Indian (Native American) Museum. Taking responsibility for the dinosaurs is Native American rights activist Raoul Trujillo (as Dakota), who has a tantrum in the Oregon museum. However, the real bad guys are greedy land developers who want to desecrate ancient Indian land. Perhaps the dinosaurs are mad because Indians took the land from them. No, that doesn't made sense – but neither does this movie...

Director Colin Ferguson's bickering co-stars are Steven Brand (as Jake Roundtree) and Kirsty Mitchell (as Emma Neil). With any luck, they will rediscover their love before the closing credits, and make rebellious daughter Emilia Clarke (as Savannah) happy enough to do an Indian rain dance. Running with the duo during the opening minutes, resourceful Gabriel Womack (as Wyatt) is the most useful member of the cast. The worst part of the horror is when Mr. Brand takes two young recruits from the local college to shoot a dinosaur with very big guns. Brand should have known what was going to happen the first time one of the dinosaur skeletons disassembled, but he stands there with a dumb look on his face instead of telling the two young guys to run inside… like, as fast as possible. Then, everyone forgets them.

*** Triassic Attack (11/27/10) Colin Ferguson ~ Steven Brand, Kirsty Mitchell, Raoul Trujillo, Gabriel Womack

The amount of enjoyment I received watching this I realized was based on how I looked at it. When it started and I was thinking "Jurassic Park", the reality of how well the directors and cast stretched what seemed a very tight budget. Fair play to them for making a derivative and formulaic script somewhat watchable.

When I started thinking of it as a "Sharknado" but with dinosaurs instead of sharks, things came more into focus. The at times over-the-top acting, low budget special effects, and ponderous music, became part of the show.

Common sense rarely exists in this kind of movie. But that is part of the fun. If you enjoy campy pseudo-horror movies, then this is worth a gander.