"Raptor Island" - Zach's Take

Raptor Island.

Just about the only good thing I can say about this movie is that its title is apt. There are raptors. And they are on an island (I mean, as far as we know -- we were never shown that all sides of the landmass were surrounded by water...). Of course, this being a Sci-Fi Channel movie (before it become "Syfy" in a desperate attempt to lock down a trademark) the actual content doesn't live up to the name.

It doesn't help that the raptors in this film are like a cut-and-paste job of the raptors from Jurassic Park. They look like a 3D modeling student's first assignment for school. Blurry, low-res textures on an awkwardly animated frame. This movie was made eleven years after Jurassic Park. You'd think that budget effects houses would be able to churn out CG that at least matches a decade-old film, but apparently not.

I feel like if the raptors were done practically with puppets and stop-motion animation, we'd have some entertainment value here. Anyone who's seen the Corman classic Carnosaur knows what I'm talking about. But alas, we have the fake-looking and stilted creatures seen here.

Granted, the dinosaurs aren't the worst-looking or most wooden things in the movie. No, that title goes to the great Lorenzo Lamas. He's like a charisma vacuum, sucking out any charm or entertainment that might be sieved through the atrociously bland script. In a different actor's hands, we might have a performance that we can at least laugh at, or be entertained by. Lamas gives us no hammy, broad performance. In fact, he gives no performance. He kinda just struggles to remember his lines here.

However, I feel like I'm selling this movie the wrong way. It's really not completely terrible or the worst thing I've ever seen. It's just perhaps the most unremarkable movie I've ever seen. The only shining light in this pit of cinematic despair is an absurdly incoherent mess of a reason for the raptor's existence. Now, I could be misinterpreting what I saw, because they never quite come out and say it. But essentially, the movie asks us to believe that radioactive waste, combined with lava, over the period of 40 years, somehow birthed raptors. And one T-Rex.

Oh right, the T-Rex.

I take back what I said about the apt title.


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