Saw 'Z/Rex: The Jurassic Dead' as part of my low-budget completest quest when it popped up by chance in the recommended for you section. Part of me was oddly intrigued by the premise, despite it being absolutely ridiculous and there are instances of fun dinosaurs on the rampage films (naming them would be unfair).
Was not expecting much from 'Z/Rex: The Jurassic Dead' to be perfectly honest at the same time. The cover/poster looked cheap, it had a low rating and the reviews were less than promising. So in all honesty was expecting something terrible. Seeing 'Z/Rex: The Jurassic Dead' with an open mind and fairness intended, it turned out to be not near as terrible as expected, it has a few not so bad things. At the same time, didn't find it a particularly good film either, pretty lame actually.
Just for the record, am somebody who hates being critical believe it or not and is more often than not encouraging and aims to be balanced and tries to evaluate rather than completely gushing or bashing, so will always severely object to being called an armchair critic/expert that is thrown around a lot immaturely.
There are positives. There is colour and atmosphere in the setting and some slickness in some of the shots. The music is not over-bearing, variety-less or monotonous, even when not being exactly memorable.
The titular character is sometimes fun and has some personality that avoids going too far on the goofiness or scare factor.
On the other hand, the limited budget shows in particularly the not always very well organised editing and the mostly quite amateurish effects (with the odd reasonable one). Most of the camera work is similarly disorganised. The dinosaur doesn't steal the show as much as it should and as an overall whole they can be used randomly and with not much threat. The human characters are underwritten and have little development or endearing personality with so many silly and less than logical behaviours and decisions (a bugbear of mine and have found myself using it a fair bit recently). None of the actors look comfortable in their roles and don't seem to be having fun at all.
Also found too much of the dialogue on the wrong side of dumb and cheesy, complete with some soapy moments, and that it didn't flow very well. The film is extremely derivative, interesting premise with far too over-familiar execution that has nothing new. The lack of imagination and suspense also hurts the film, too much evokes cringing and the thrills are sporadic. It's all very contrived and throws in far too much that the film becomes very messy and quite bizarre. The direction felt like they were not in control of the material and not at ease with the genre.
Concluding, lame but could have been worse. 3/10 Bethany Cox
