Raptor Ranch

I love movies and I also will check out most independent produced pictures as well. When I saw this had a small but functional budget, I gave it a chance.

All I can say is this. The best acting in this movie came from the animated creatures.

The script is weak and they managed to include almost every stereotype that has ever existed, yet not one of them could act!

Seriously, you will spend time that you can never get back and life is just too short to care! Don't waste your time.

Just my thoughts!

Is it a bad movie? Yes, absolutely, but B movie deliberately bad. I got a lot of giggles over the lines, especially the multiple nods towards the Jurassic Park franchise. It was fun to watch as long as you go in expecting silly.

'Raptor Ranch' (audaciously retitled 'Jurassic Dark' with a D in my country) tells us about the waitress Abbi (Jana Mashonee). She has a really bad day: she is stuck in a boring countryside town, her car breaks down, her boss is really mean to her, and everybody she meets is an idiot. However the worst is yet to come when a bunch of dinosaurs escapes from a farm nearby - how they were bred there, we never really find out. Anyway, there is a lot of screaming, running, killing, more running. Two FBI agents (Declan Joyce and the only star Lorenzo Lamas in a rather small part) look for clues, but don't find much, although the hungry reptiles are running around all over the place.

I can't really say much to praise this movie. The animation is mediocre, acting skills non existing, and the narration and editing clumsy. For example, in one scene 2 characters find a safe place of a roof where the creatures can't catch them. They climb down again - why? Because they enjoy being chased?

In my view, there is only 1 thing that 'Raptor Ranch' does better than other low budget flicks of the genre, and that is the choice of characters. From the entertainer in a purple suit to the college kid who dresses as a Roman Centurio, there is a lot of weird characters, the comedy bits sometimes work well, which is why I don't regret too much that I wasted an evening watching this. One kid proudly announces men will finally defeat reptiles because they have a higher intelligence - this movie may not be the best example for that. I voted 3 of 10.

Even from the trailer, Raptor Ranch from the get go was one such movie to not expect too much from and to not take too seriously. The trailer did look sort of fun, if in a guilty-pleasure sort of way, and any movie deserves to be seen fairly. Sad to say that from personal opinion Raptor Ranch is every bit as bad as the reviews and ratings here say(and no I am not one of those immature people who voted 1 literally a year before Raptor Ranch was even released), one of those instances where the ridiculously hyperbolic IMDb plot summary is more entertaining than anything in this movie put together. Even for a low-budget movie the movie looks cheap. It has a very drab look, is edited awkwardly often and the dinosaurs not only move with such stiffness but they are poorly designed and textured- they would belong more at home in perhaps 70s-80s high school art projects- as well as not blending at all within the backgrounds. The soundtrack is at best forgettable and it adds little if at all to the movie. The dialogue sounds improvised judging from the delivery and sounds incredibly stilted, the humour often forced. If you're looking for any excitement, suspense, tension and surprises, look somewhere else, the storytelling is incredibly simplistic and predictable with a story that is nowhere near enough to sustain the length, even before the ending you can tell they were running out of ideas. Raptor Ranch tries to incorporate different genres, like horror, thriller, comedy and action-adventure and because of primarily the forced humour, the complete lack of creativity and the atmosphere being next to non-existent it fails miserably at every single one. You don't engage with any of the characters, it is true that every stereotype seems here and they are written very poorly, coming across as obnoxious and spoilt brats. In fact you find yourself rooting for the dinosaurs and they are also the best actors, that's saying little because they also have a lack of personality so you cannot relate to anything that goes on within the story and what's happening to the characters. When the dinosaurs' acting is little to write home about, that goes to show actually at how awful the acting is, it doesn't even look like acting. The action is limp and even the death scenes lack originality and suffer from the worst of the editing, the only thing that they succeed in doing is that you are secretly glad that with every killing that there is one less annoying character to "care" about. All in all, an amateurish mess(so much so it is very difficult to find a shred of entertainment value), prehistoric terror is a far from apt description and it is best left forgotten. 1/10 Bethany Cox

People might think, Oh no, another dinosaur flick, but they would be wrong. Raptor Ranch would be much more than just another dinosaur flick; it would be a thoughtfully laid-out project that made sure to cover all avenues of its intended plot, thus providing an entertaining watch for the viewer. Not only that, but Dan Bishop ensured he had the actors who could hit the standard of performance he was looking for in his characters, not forgetting the extensive work in their CGI to give you the most convincing-looking raptors/rex going. I certainly won't want to bump into them, especially at night. Frankly, Raptor Ranch was a delight to watch and one well worth eight at the minimum. Thank you.