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Review: Milko Davis & Thomas Martwick’s Jurassic Dead

The Jurassic Dead is currently available on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD courtesy of Wild Eye Releasing. It seems like an exciting title, mixing zombies with dinosaurs, and it’s hitting the market just before Blockbuster Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I was interested in reviewing this title, but my anticipation took a nose-dive when I saw that it was co-directed by Milko Davis. While he has another creature feature out on the market, Tsunambee, and he’s accomplished more as a film-maker than I have…well, his work just isn’t very good. There’s a fine line between a film being independently produced and a film being trash. Unfortunately, Tsunambee landed on the latter side and I fully expected The Jurassic Dead to follow suit. While I can confirm that The Jurassic Dead is a notch above Milko’s previous movie in terms of production quality, certain effects and acting performances, that doesn’t really say a lot and this one’s still pretty bad. A collaboration between Milko Davis and Thomas Martwick, based on the screenplay by Mike Pacitto, this movie is a fun, albeit laughable, effort from Cyclops Dome Entertainment and GAM3 that even a revamped version of “Elvira’s Movie Macabre” wouldn’t touch.

Straight from Wild Eye Releasing’s press release, The Jurassic Dead follows, “a unit of mercenaries who must team up with a group of tech-geek students after American is struck with an EMP attack. Deep in the desert, they find the source of the terror – a mad scientist who has also just created a living dead T-Rex dinosaur, one who turns everyone it attacks into a zombie. Now they must scramble to stay alive and save the planet from the ultimate undead predator.” Produced by Micele Pacitto, Andy Haman, Aaron Goodman and Adam Mittelstadt, The Jurassic Dead stars Andy Haman, Raquel Pennington, Ruselis Aumeen Perry, Shale Le Page, Juan Gonzalez, Mia Klosterman, Nicole Goeke and Ben Johnson. It gets off to a shaky start and never recovers, although the story does bounce around the meter in terms of its minimal entertainment factor. I wanted to like it, believe it or not, but there wasn’t much for me to cheer for. Again, the acting is better here than in previous Milko Davis movies and some areas of production are slightly better. So, here’s what I liked and didn’t like about this movie. Here’s why it’s nothing to write home about…and should probably be avoided. Besides not giving a crap about any of the characters. Uh, let me just start a new paragraph for this.

The Good: The acting is average across the board, with a few actors turning in performances that prove they have adequate abilities outside of campy B-movies. At least they probably had fun making this movie! All of the action and content on screen was captured to the best of its ability. The audio was pretty decent, too. I think my two favorite things were the special effects gore when it was done by practical means and, honestly, some of the dinosaur CGI wasn’t bad at all. Three crucial components were pulled off correctly in the blunder that is The Jurassic Dead. It’s one of those movies where the best part was the ending. Literally. The Bad: My god. The camera work. I know when working with a green-screen the picture quality can suffer but… Why did The Jurassic Dead look like it was an aborted 3D picture? Why does Milko Davis always do these terrible outside desert shots? The Jurassic Dead looked almost like a motion comic or old console video game than a movie that was made in 2017 or 2018. And let me not get started on the dinosaur when it was made by practical means. A lot more effort was needed there. You can’t falter on your main draw or people will nail you for it, just as I am. And, it should also be noted that this production focused way to much on non-existent wow factor. If they cut out a few of the action sequences and directed that energy towards beefing up other areas of work, this could have turned out a little better. But they did way too much with too little.

A movie that spins zombies with dinosaurs, but is tremendously low on both accounts, The Jurassic Dead honestly isn’t worth the price of a Blu-ray or DVD purchase. The only way I can recommend it is if you’re a campy, z-budget, creature feature fan and you can find a cheap streaming site. This movie has no real value outside of that. Sorry, guys. Final Score: 4 out of 10.

Michael DeFellipo

(Senior Editor)

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