Triassic World

Overall Grade: 2.05/5, C-, .5 Stars

Generally, I like movies from The Asylum, and I can put up with a lot of bad movies. This movie, however, was just terrible. I could not find anything in this movie that I would consider redeemable, and I Jurassic Prey a B+. This movie was just bad.

Storyline (1/5): The general idea of the movie, if they had actually done anything with it, was that a company wanted to use dinosaurs to create replacement body parts for humans. Interesting idea... that they did absolutely nothing with. Instead, they chose to go with a story about dinosaurs getting loose in a laboratory and just killing everyone, which would generally be okay, but I just didn't give a crap about any of the characters.

Characters (2/5): The characters in this movie were so bland they were almost derivative. They were also completely unlikeable. In most bad movies, you can at least root for the characters, even if you know they're probably going to die at some point. But even the main character you can get behind and hope nothing happens to them. In this movie, if everyone died, I figured the world would be better off. Even at the end, when the main character was saved, I just didn't care.

Directing (1/5): I wish I could say the director at least tried, except he tried to copy other directors who did this type of movie better and didn't seem to put any real effort into his job. It's almost as if he read the script and didn't add any flare to it. His directing was dry, overly dramatic, and too serious for a movie like this. I don't mind movies being dramatic, but seriously, this is a movie about dinosaurs being harvested for their organs. Have a little fun with it.

Casting (2/5): Most of the time with Asylum movies, the casting may not be great, but the actors are at least likeable. None of the actors in this movie were likeable, and it wasn't just the roles they were playing (see below).

Acting (3/5): The actors took their roles entirely too seriously, and I have to assume the director was responsible. I assume when being cast, he said something along the lines of "This is going to be a movie to rival Jurassic Park. I want you to put everything you have into your roles." Then he starts swinging a watch before their eyes in a hypnotizing manner. "This is not a straight-to-video movie. This is an Oscar-winning movie. You need to give an Oscar-winning performance. When you wake up, you will take this movie seriously!" Snap Unfortunately, the actors made you not care about their characters.

Music (3/5): The music fit the movie pretty well: It was dry, dull, and did nothing to make this movie exciting. It fit into the background very well and was utterly and completely forgettable. 3 out of 5 might be too generous, but at least the music wasn't horrendous.

Cinematography (3/5): For the most part, the cinematography was pretty good in this movie. The dinosaurs didn't look like crap, but I've seen better dinosaurs on YouTube. Camera work all around was solid, so not real complaints here.

Production Design (3/5): The corporate laboratory setting wasn't bad, but it did look like a cheap set in many places. And the layout was sometimes confusing. Costumes looked okay and nothing seemed out of place.

Pacing (3/5): For a short movie, the pacing was very slow. There were points were I kept checking the time to see how much time was left and sorely disappointed by how much time was left.

Enjoyment (1/5): I did not like this movie. I did not like the plot, I did not like the characters—-I did not like anything about it. For an Asylum movie, this was one of the worst I've seen. I recommend avoiding it unless you just want to torture yourself. Go watch Jurassic Prey instead--it's bad, but at least it knows it's bad.