Bullet Points: Raptor Ranch
This title reminded me of what reality television might be like if someone ever learns how to bring back dinosaurs. We’ll be in for loads of new shows about people keeping them as pets, using them for work related purposes, and then, of course, the people who inevitably get eaten by them. Reality television could use a good punch. It hasn’t changed much since it first started. How many years in a row can they keep putting out The Bachelorette, Big Brother and Survivor before someone decides to throw in a live bear? Now that is something I might actually watch!
Synopsis: Fossil Ridge, once believed to be a cattle ranch is discovered to be a breeding ground for vicious prehistoric velociraptors. When the bloodthirsty dinosaurs escape, the townspeople must fight to survive the deadly raptors.
- Small town, big dinos: Say what you will about small-town America, but it never fails to bring about new and exciting ways to kill people. If it isn’t the opioid crisis or rampant obesity, it’s 70 million year old reptiles. Fossil Ridge may just look like any other hick town but it has one resident who has been experimenting long enough to bring back the velociraptor. A silly mistake, no doubt, but one that gives us the opportunity to see what it looks like when a person’s head is bitten clean off and their body used like one of those wooden cutouts that you stand behind at an amusement park.
- No small roles: Writer/director Dan Bishop doesn’t do a terrible job here. You can see him in the movie as a Professor in a scene but I thought he did an admirable job with the characters and dialogue. There isn’t a specific character that I would call the “main role” for the majority of the movie. Sure, we empathize with Jana Mashonee’s Abbi but mostly because she’s stuck in this shit town and she clearly deserves better. The movie also offers us a few other characters in the way of a traveling funk band and a trio of college students on their way to doing some skiing. They all end up at the same craphole gas station where they’re eventually confronted by the man-eating dinosaurs. Just another day in Fossil Ridge.
- Enter Lamas: Veteran badass Lorenzo Lamas finally enters the frame as FBI Special Agent Logan. He and his partner show up in the small town after a mysterious murder (done by the raptors) and spend most of the movie either asleep or talking on the phone. They must have only had the man for a couple of days but I felt like there was a much better use of his talents.
- Dino-sized clichés: By this point, every dino movie has a scene where someone gets killed on the toilet. If I don’t see that in the next Jurassic Park movie then I riot.
- Unleash the idiots: As the movie gets further along, the characters that I didn’t hate at the beginning start to be the worst part of the film. One of the girls from the tour bus and a couple of the skiers turn out to be real morons. Jana Mashonee turns out to be the only character who isn’t a complete ass. Heck, she even uses her archery skills to fight back against the damned raptors.
- The final act: While I quite enjoyed the first act of the movie introducing the characters, I thought the final act was a boatload of crap. The raptors are loose by this time and are running around biting the heads off folks but most of the final 25 minutes is spent watching them chase the final remaining characters through various places like the woods or an abandoned warehouse. Nothing of note in the finale tends to drive down the overall joy that I get from watching a movie.
They’ve been gone millions of years but they still deserve some Bonus Bullet Points:
- Little Willie could have been my favorite character if they had given him more screentime. Think of Sexual Chocolate from Coming to America mixed with a little Chapelle’s Show Prince. Pretty great, actually.
- Is there no one else in this town? The commotion alone should have caused dozens of people to poke their heads out of their windows.
- Also titled The Dinosaur Experiment.
- The movie plays fast and loose with the 20 something cliché’s. We get the goth girl, the fat rocker, the douche jock, and a few others that you can probably guess. Every character except for Jana Mashonee’s is pretty stereotypical, to be honest.
- Did I mention that Jana Mashonee is insanely hot?
The Verdict: One of my more positive thoughts on the movie has to do with the look of the raptors. Most movies with a budget like this would have terrible looking dinos but Raptor Ranch actually has a pretty decent look to the things. The characters go from being funny and not too annoying to me wanting to see them die horribly. Some of the deaths were actually really good and the gore level goes from nothing to bloody fun pretty quickly. The biggest problems with the movie come from the shit pacing during the second half and the way the characters eventually go from decent to terrible. Jana Mashonee is good and deserves better but Dan Bishop and his crew didn’t do a terrible job. There are many worse movies you could watch featuring more poorly designed dinosaurs with worse characters. If you’re looking for a low-budget raptor kill movie then you might have found it. Check it out on VUDU for free!
