Raptor Island (2004 TV Movie) User Reviews

Raptor fans, steer clear.

[lozmaniac2007 · 1/10 · 21 August 2004]

Horrible CGI, horrible effects, and horrible acting. When I first saw the raptors, I was immediately reminded of Turok. When the raptors got shot, I was reminded of horribly crude video game violence and paintball combined, and then their wounds magically disappeared. When a guy got eaten, their bodies became puddles of blood and a few clothing fragments... no bones, no organs, no nothing. And they sounded like the lions in Zoo Tycoon.

Another thing I hoped was that they would make the raptors smarter than this... when hunting, they stood there and watched the people as they fired at them.

Dinosaur fans and raptor fans... go watch JP instead. A 4/10 movie.

If Jurassic Park were made with a bunch of 12 year olds with toy guns, you'd have this movie.

[supa_fun-1 · 1/10 · 21 August 2004]

I mean, come on! The CG is terrible. An amateur on his home computer could make better dinosaurs. The actors are horrible as well.

First off, I'd like to give some reasons as to why the story sucked.

(SPOILERS!!!!!)

First off, two forces from different nations, caught up in a fight next to the island was a poor way to get a few people killed by dinosaurs. It lacked creativity.

Second, a plane crashes, causing radiation to spill on to the island, turning the creatures on the island into these raptor creatures. I would like to inform the makers of this film, that nuclear radiation in 40 years will not turn back time. Lizards will not become Raptors of the dinosaur age. Therefore one of two things has happened here. A) The idea behind the story defies evolution, or B) These aren't real Raptors.

Whoever told the actors where to shoot, obviously didn't speak before hand with the FX guys, because the actors shoot all over the place, and never hit the raptors. I saw a shot, where 5 raptors were directly in front of a guy, and he shot the tree to the side. He constantly shot the tree, and never the raptors. Also, whenever a raptor is shot, red gas comes out of the hole, then a bit of blood drips out. What are these things, balloons?

One more thing. Whenever the raptors bite or slash someone before eating them, the person disappears, and there's only a few drops of blood. Not bodies, and gushes. Totally un-realistic. Bodies don't disappear.

I hated this film. I went into it hoping to see a movie with dinosaurs that did not steal from Jurassic Park. I was very disappointed. The raptors looked like the Jurassic Park raptors, and the big raptor looked like the Carnotaur from Disney's Dinosaur.

I would not recommend this movie to anyone. It down right stank.

Oh my god!

[BumbIeBeetuna · 2/10 · 13 December 2005]

I happened to have just finished watching Raptor Island, and my god it was awful! Now I'm usually very glad to watch horrible B rated movies(Frankenfish was my favorite) but this was crap! CRAP! The acting was terrible. There was one part where one Navy Seal TRIPS OVER A LOG AFTER HE LOOKS BACK AND SEES IT only to be eaten by the raptors. Oh what they aren't raptors! They're mutated dinosaurs! Not only are they the fake st things i have ever seen, they get shot and ignore the bullets! Its like a video game. They shoot the "Raptors" an the bullets disappear to leave no wound. And when a "Raptor attacks someone, in less than two seconds there's nothing but a blood stain! Way to go Sci Fi! Way to go!

Bad, but not quite horrible

[gtc83 · 4/10 · 22 August 2004]

I just watched this on Sci-Fi last night. It's about a group of Navy SEALS who are sent to rescue some sort of CIA operative from a ship, where she's being held by terrorists. Afterwards, the terrorists flee to some island, still with their prisoner, and the SEALS pursue. The SEALS get the CIA person back, but by then they've discovered that the island is overrun by raptors.

Much bad CGI and firing of ammo follows.

Actually, there is some good CGI in the movie, like when they're in the cave which is the "incubator" for the raptors. That looked pretty cool. But most of the raptors that are running around in the woods, well, they look a little worse than the ones in The Lost World TV show, and when the SEALS shoot at them and blood starts spurting out, it's straight out of a video game. You will not be able to stop laughing at some of those scenes. And the raptors just stand there, totally oblivious to the fact they're being shot. One of them takes about 50 rounds to the butt, which is really hilarious because you'd think he'd turn around and see what's going on back there, but he doesn't.

Another thing that's annoying is that the SEALS suffer from a complete and utter lack of peripheral vision. A terrorist can be crouched behind a small tree as a soldier walks by, then the camera pans down and you see the terrorist, and realize there's no possible way that the soldier could have not noticed him. And, since they chose to call these guys SEALS, which makes one think they're highly trained, why do they never aim their weapons at anything? A raptor can be right in front of them and instead of aiming at it, they spray rounds back and forth in a wide arc.

The whole movie is full of such silliness. After being instructed to conserve their ammo, they fire an extra fifty rounds into a raptor that's already dead. It's all this inattention to detail that makes it abundantly clear throughout the film that you're not watching a "real" movie.

But, the last one minute of the movie almost makes it worth it. Some pretty cool CGI, and the best line of the whole movie is the last one.

Sugar Maples in the South China Sea Jungle

[CelluloiDiva · 1/10 · 2 May 2005]

This move was a 10.5 on our Cheez-o-meter, the highest ranking possible, thanks to the earthquake movie of the same name. We knew we were setting ourselves up for a lambasting with "Raptor Island", we just didn't realize how badly.

OK, so the movie is made on the super cheap, with crappy CGI, models that scream "REVELL!!" and an utterly ridiculous plot scenario. I can get past a lot of cheapness necessitated by TV movie budgets, but what I cannot accept is the flagrant carelessness of the director. C'mon, people, the story takes place on an island in the South China Sea: so why are we looking at boreal forest, replete with ivy-covered trees, in what is obviously fall? During the scene where Hack and Jamie are holed up in the plane wreckage, their breath is clearly visible when they speak. Sorry, folks, no matter how you slice it, British Columbia can never stand in for a tropical island.

And what was with that weather at the end? The captain says their "socked in" "in this pea soup", but the island is having a lovely red sunset. Cut to helicopter pilot guy, shown in the cockpit with a raging ocean behind him. Cut to island sunset. Cut to helicopter flying over wrecked zodiac - it's night. Cut to Hack and Jamie, fighting off the bad guy, in full daylight. Cut back to pilot, shown in cockpit with that same raging ocean behind him. Cut to sunset. WASN'T ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION? Could they have at least TRIED to seem as though they were trying to be credible? Though this one was ripe for Joel and the Bots, we had plenty of fun of our own. Sublimely silly and purely ridiculous, there is no excuse to watch "Raptor Island", unless you're socked in by pea soup. Which we were.

What a pile of fetid dingoes kidneys!!

[diginerd · 1/10 · 22 August 2004]

Went straight into my bottom 10 movies of all time.

It's not even so bad it's actually funny.

It sets whole new standards of how bad a movie can be. Horrible pacing, awful editing, bad acting, and that's without mentioning the "Dinosaurs". I've met 16 year olds who could do better CGI & compositing than exhibited in this stinking mess.

It has no artistic merit, and wound me up so much I actually finally got around to registering after using this site for years simply so I could post this dire warning..

Avoid at all costs.

Puppy Chow

[bkoganbing · 2/10 · 22 July 2007]

Raptor Island is a Science Fiction channel revival of all those dinosaur films from the Cold War era where radiation is responsible for all kinds of strange beings.

In this case a cargo plane crashed some time during the sixties on a volcanic island in the South China Sea, spilling radioactive material on the island.

Fast forward to the War on Terror and a Navy SEAL team group headed by Lorenzo Lamas is trying to rescue a CIA agent Hayley DuMond from a group of Moslem terrorists headed by Steven Bauer. The terrorists, the SEALS and the CIA agent all wind up on that same island where in thirty years, raptors have returned to life and are multiplying exponentially.

All the clichés from those Cold War films are carefully preserved and recycled for the War on Terror. Despite the even more sophisticated weaponry of 2004, I can't believe how any of them survive. They should all have been raptor puppy chow as Lorenzo Lamas puts it.

In terms of special effects, Jurassic Park it ain't. And the players can barely keep a straight face. Raptor Island is worth a few laughs.

And if you can believe it, the Science Fiction channel has a sequel for this film, Raptor Planet.

Should've been called Crappy Effects Island

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 30 May 2012]

As with most SyFy movies, I wasn't really expecting much, as while a few of their movies are tolerable a lot of them range from bad to bottom-of-the-barrel quality. But I wasn't actually expecting Raptor Island to be this bad, not their very worst but it is down there. The acting is pretty much non-descript, I couldn't remember any of the performances after watching, that's how bland and awful they were. They aren't helped by stereotypical, annoying characters, a lifeless, humourless and tense-less script and a story that is not just dull and ridiculous but one that you can guess exactly where it was going. Aside from the dull scenery and choppy editing, it was the effects that single-handedly ruined Raptor Island, crude, artificial and lacking completely lacking in menace they are some of the worst effects I've ever seen. Overall, laughable acting, bland acting, a ridiculous story, annoying characters and embarrassing dialogue made Raptor Island an absolute joke of a movie. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Laughable

[MartianOctocretr5 · 3/10 · 20 March 2007]

Some of the cheapest looking CGI creatures you'll ever see attack some of the most poorly trained mercenary troops to ever brandish fake looking weapons on a bogus "South Sea island" set (in Canada). The goofs are endless, the script resembles mangled Swiss cheese, and the story is pretty much a chaotic maze of nothingness.

The Raptor attacks are priceless. Usually they stand around, hanging out in groups doing nothing, as nitwit Green Beret wanna-be's pepper them with hundreds of rounds, and they just kind of stare in stupefied apathy as the useless bullets shower them. One of two things always happens: Either they get sick of being shot at, and they gang tackle the victim and then some animated blood spurts around; or a poorly done CGI red blotch appears on the poor confused Raptor and it drops over in a heap, never losing that silly grin they always seem to have. The chronological order for the victims-to-be is so obvious, they might as well have had numbers painted on their faces.

Viewers definitely need to "turn off the brain" for this material. The writer, director, and cast certainly did.

Funny if you like watching a cinematic disaster in progress

[johnsamo-1 · 30 April 2005]

Pretty sorry effort. I'm not sure who did a worse job, the director, the CGI guys, or Lorenzo Lamos... Lamos, who's never been that good, just really sucks this time out. It looks like he isn't even trying....

A good director probably could've made this a halfway decent B movie. The CGI wouldn't have been nearly as bad if they'd not held the shot for so long and had planted a few squibs in the forest to add to the illusion that they were actually getting shot. I presume this Navy seal raid had to happen in the daytime simply because the production couldn't afford to light a night scene, but I guess these guys have never heard of shooting day-for-night.

Awful movie!!!

[longj65 · 1/10 · 2 May 2005]

Like others have said about this movie, I think this has to rate the worst I've ever seen. Well, maybe it's tied with another worst one about some Leprechaun. Both movies have terrible special effects (which aren't so special at all). My son does stop-animation on his home computer with Playdough figures that are more realistic and entertaining than the dinosaurs in this movie. And when there's a fast-paced action scene, the cameraman shakes the camera wildly to try to give the effect that the action's more realistic and scary than it really is. And Navy Seals? You've got to be kidding! I'd be really ticked off if I were a real Navy Seal and saw the shameful way these guys were portraying the Seals. And the fantastic "hunks" that other commenters mentioned that give some merit to the movie don't impress me at all. I fell asleep watching this thing and don't know how it ends, but I'm sure the last half hour was as bad as the first part of the film. Don't waste your time on this. The bad CGI isn't even funny to watch (like the old dinosaur movies pre-Jurassic Park period), and the acting on the part of the humans in the movie is, like I said, just plain awful.

Harmless Scifi fun.

[sisaacs100 · 8/10 · 15 September 2004]

For a low budget movie, there is a lot on the screen. Loads of action and some very cool CGI, especially the giant creature and the lava flows. Steven Bauer was humorous and human in the bad guy role and Lorenzo Lamas was nice on the eyes. I wish the "island" was tropical not wooded and that the supporting cast was better. You can pick movies apart for all kinds of reasons, but all in all I like movies with plots that let you check you brain at the door and that you still can have fun with. Raptor Island is one of those kinds of films.

A Dissenting Review; This Movie is not so bad!

[Eventuallyequalsalways · 7/10 · 2 September 2006]

I've read almost all of the reviews of this movie and I have to be the lone voice in the wilderness among them. Practically everyone who posted a review appears to have read the other reviews and then set forth to see how uniquely they could trash this movie "Raptor Island". Some go so far as to rank it as one of the worst movies ever made. Give me a break! You've got to be pretty pathetic to sink that low on a list of all movies ever made. I read a lot of reviews about movies and books, and my goal is to obtain some indication of the worth of a property to provide a little entertainment. To say that this movie was worthless is a disservice to the casual viewer who is simply looking for a cinematic diversion. Perhaps the other reviewers should look objectively at most of the big-bucks flicks whose costs are driven into the stratosphere by big-name stars and by following the direction of the accounting office. Do they sincerely want to watch sequel after sequel for years on end because the accounting office knows that sequels make more money? Frankly, I am deeply grateful that made-for-TV movies exist and are funded by such as the Sci-Fi channel. These movies give the Indy filmmakers a chance to practice their craft; most of them actually seem to follow a script. They give young unknown actors a chance to work. Reviewer after reviewer criticized the Computer Graphics Images (CGI) in this movie. Listen, this movie may not have the very latest CGI, but I can remember years and years of movie-viewing where these CGI effects would have been outstanding. Granted, this movie did not set forth to be a big movie, but it does what it was intended to do, provide a couple of hours of good entertaining TV fare. If you like action flicks with a lot of firepower and an actual script which takes you through a real story, then this movie delivers the goods. I'm certain it didn't win any awards, but it was worth a couple of idle hours on a Saturday afternoon on the SciFi channel. I, for one, hope the SciFi folks don't get discouraged when people dump all over their work as many of the other reviewers did. We need far more creativity in Hollywood and it ain't coming from the big guys, folks. These little Indy movies and made-for-TV movies are where the skills are being nurtured which may give us some decent entertainment in the future. If we could only get the accounting department folks out of script selection, the American movie industry would be revitalized. And I'll tell you another thing, we need more reviewers who have their own point of view, and fewer reviewers who try to out-trash their peers.

um this was pretty bad

[trutru · 1/10 · 26 August 2004]

Well honestly i didn't expect too much from this movie. The previews for it didn't even show the raptors for obvious reasons. This movie is just plain terrible, probably the worst movie i have ever seen. If you are looking for a good comedy movie this has to be it. the acting is bad, (just watching the guy struggle to trip over a log thta was on the ground took awhile), the lines are just as bad. I feel bad for the actors, they will never get another job again. Now for the worst part of the movie,the CGI. It looks like a Nintendo game from the 80's. from the beginning to end the cgi is terrible. just terrible. honestly horendous. the raptors look terrible, especially when shot at, apparently the effects are similar to the video game DOOM where the blood splats occur for a second and disappear. don't watch, please spare yourself, unless you want to laugh the entire movie

Not Lorenzo Lamas' finest hour...

[jmsfan · 2/10 · 7 January 2006]

...but then what is? Here it is 2006 and I've just gotten around to watching this "movie." Yes, it was high on my "must-see" list. I kid! I kid! Just bored on a Saturday afternoon and during my channel-surfing I come across this flick and decide "what the heck!" It should have been "what the hell?!" The fact that Lasagna, er, Lorenzo Lamas was the star should have warned me, but I'm a glutton for punishment.

I agree with every other review about the horrible effects. The things that made me laugh the most was the NAVY S.E.A.L.s' poor shooting ( the trees in the woods come out on the bad end of that ), Lorenzo throwing his machine-gun about a quarter-of-a-mile across a lava chasm to the CIA girl, the Russian agent and Lorenzo shooting at each other with machine-guns at POINT BLANK range ( Lorenzo on the helicopter, Russian on the ground ) and missing each other! This movie is full of wacked-out jollies like this. But still, I could not look away. Something about the Sci-Fi Channel and their crap movies compels me to watch. Watch, but only if you want to make fun or truly enjoy cheese, which I admit, I do. "Frankenfish" is still the best Sci-Fi movie yet, IMHO.

Horrible

[rockbandlover22 · 2/10 · 21 July 2009]

This movie was horrible. I couldn't stand it. The computer graphics looked like they belonged in a cheap video game and the fight scenes were the worst i had ever seen. The people couldn't shoot worth crap and when they did manage to get some hits on the raptors, the corny blood spat out and there wasn't even an entrance or exit wound. In the scene where Azeer was killed by the three raptors they ate his entire body, bones, organs and all, in about 2.73 seconds. I think that's a record. Also whenever the people would start shooting the raptors the raptors just stood there like nothing was happening until they decided to run away. The acting was bad but the plot was okay. I rate movies half on how much I enjoyed them and how well they were made. I give this a 2/10 and that is the worst i give. Go watch a better dinosaur movie like Jurassic Park or something instead of wasting your time watching this.

This "Movie" Insulted My Sci-Fi Intelligence!!!

[pchic · 2/10 · 21 August 2004]

Never before have I ever thought that a movie could be as bad as this, but this one is!!! The story line is OK, the acting is tolerable and I totally adore Lorenzo Lamas and Steven Bauer (they are totally hot!!!), most of the other actors parts were "ok" for me, but the CGI is so horribly done that it insults everyone involved (actors, producers, directors, FX people, and especially the viewers to the point where this is the worst made film I have ever seen. For instance: when you shoot an animal with an AK-47; blood is SUPPOSED to spurt out of its body, not just disappear into thin air and it supposed to at least flinch a muscle or two from being shot. If you have seen this movie, you know what I am talking about. Through out the entire movie where you see raptors, it is tooo apparent that they are very poorly done CGI. The special effects person should NOT put this movie in their resume'!!! I love almost all sci-fi movies and dinosaur movies like "Jurassic Park" (all of them), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World", etc... and am a very forgiving person when it comes to graphics, scripts, and even acting, but everyone involved with the making of this movie should be VERRRRRY ashamed of themselves for ever allowing their names to ever be associated with it. Thank God I saw it on cable and didn't have to pay to see it (only the 2 hellaciously long hours it took for it to finally end). The only frightening moment about this movie for me was that I was totally mortified that blood was going to shoot out of my own eyes just for watching this piece of crap!!! But Lorenzo and Steven are still two of Hollywood's Hunks that are always very easy on my eyes!!! I rate this movie a 2 out of 10 (one for Lorenzo and one for Steven!!!!) They are the ONLY reason I kept watching this abomination. If they weren't through out the entire movie, I would have shut off my TV 5 minutes after the CGI effects started!!

One of the worst Sci-Fi channel movies ever!!!

[Hell_Staind · 1/10 · 6 March 2005]

-MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS-

This movie was a horrible film by any standards, But what got me the most was how bad the special effects were. Now when I say bad I mean by today's standards, if the film was released 25 years ago it might have been received better. But still with a little help from my buddies I could have made the films digital effects three times better! other then that the film was still one of the worst films I ever saw Sci-Fi channel produce, (and they have made some bad ones). The raptors were funny to watch simply because when ever they would get hit with a bullet it would make a really unrealistic blood splat and then just disappear without a bullet hole or any mark at all. I believe in a couple scenes the raptors would actually ignore getting shot, which at that point the film turned into a comedy for me. However the film (at least to me) was so bad that it made it enjoyable to watch.

The worst Sci-Fi Channel dinosaur movie ever...

[Phillemos · 3/10 · 27 August 2006]

...and believe me, a 3 is very generous and based solely on my affinity for all things dinosaurian. First of all, these "raptors" look pretty lame. They are hardly raptorian, in the strict Velocirpator sense. I don't see any of the Velociraptors' infamous toe-claws on any of these things. They look like your typical, run-of-the-mill small predatory dinosaurs that would be more likely to attack small lizards and birds than human beings. To be honest, the Navy SEALs really should be able to beat these raptors senseless. Or just shoot them once and kill them. Lorenzo Lamas gives a typically bad Lorenzo Lamas performance. Not only is he a really bad Navy SEAL, he's a really bad actor. The girl Hayley Du Mond is attractive and keeps your interest for awhile, there's some sort of Allosaurus-type beast that appears from time to time to lessen our boredom. Overall, this is a pretty bad movie.

Bad, so, so bad!

[bill04043 · 1/10 · 4 March 2006]

Wow this movie has the worst special effects I have EVER seen! In the opening sequence I was looking for the strings on the airplane. The raptors getting "shot" was a joke. And the shooters were so freakin' stupid!! Haven't any of these people ever even held a real firearm? We're supposed to believe Seals shoot from the hip? I guess you could expect that from the untrained "bad guys", but any 12 year old with a BB gun knows better. And the spray and pray was just as bad. I won't even talk about how fake-looking the smoke and flames were. We're talking 1950's technology here.

The whole thing was pathetic. Whoever did the technical advising on this film should look forward to a great career in the food service industry. "Want fries with that?" I'm going to have to go look up the director's name so I know whose films to avoid in the future.

I think I've voted on over 100 films here, this is the first time I ever gave a "1".

Tried to be Jurassic Park, but failed miserably

[rbgecko · 3/10 · 30 April 2005]

Man, seeing the previews of the movie hyped it up, but when I clicked on it to watch it it was painful to watch. First off, the guys who produced it were too cheap to get a real aircraft or even use CGI for the plane, instead they used a poorly made model of it. Then, without warning after the crash, it went all down hill from there. The Raptors, which looked to be CGI, had like really poor intelligence. They stood there being shot, and didn't even move to kill the person shooting them. Instead they stood over the body, which they killed in a Tyrannosaurus or big hunter sort of way(never once did they use their Terrible Claws). The only good CGI Dino was that Tyrannosaurus look alike, which looked like a amalgam of T-Rex and Carnotaurus. The acting, if you can call it that, was just plain horrible. Huge plot lines in the story, you could drive the Titanic through them. Even the location was wrong for a Dinosaur flick. This movie was just as bad as the Carnosaurs trilogy, and that is saying a lot. Jurassic Park III was a low point in the Jurassic Park series, but no Dino flick is as bad as Raptor Island in my book.

3/10, stay far, far away from this movie.

Not so cynical

[RckstrJen1 · 10 October 2004]

I have to agree with most of the comments here, the movie WAS indeed awful, but I'm not going to be so cynical about it. I actually enjoyed the movie because of the fact that it was so bad. The raptors look like paper mache (spelling?) and their roars sound like lions. If you've ever seen Jurassic Park, you notice that the raptors in that movie make a noise that is distinct and doesn't sound like most of the other dinosaurs, or any other animal. But in Raptor Island, they sound like lions, it's quite hilarious. Also, the backgrounds used were TERRIBLE! Can we say green screen? Actually, I'm not sure a green screen was used, I think it was probably armature artwork used in the back. And the island doesn't look foreign and exotic at all, it looks like it was filmed in Wisconsin or something...

Anyway, if your someone who gets a kick out of laughing at a movie that's supposed to be scary or thrilling but is so NOT.. I definitely suggest you check out when it's playing next on SciFi channel and WATCH IT!! It's incredibly hilarious. Just don't waste money on it..

This movie rocks

[KevinTurner · 10/10 · 8 May 2005]

Man this movie was the best movie I have ever seen!Nah I am just playing it was pretty bad but I was interested in the movie because I wanted to see if it could get any worse near the end. I wont lie i was interested in the story, However the CGI was horrible. The script was very c grade but it was interesting. I am wondering about some of the CGI with the helicopters cause they look too good to come from the same guys as the raptors. I suspect they spliced some video game footage and put it in. Also I am giving this movie a ten because I fear that a lot of people will give it a one which in turn, will make the movie "APE" and "Raptor" move up in the worst movie category. That cannot be allowed. Attack of the killer tomatoes was better than ape!!!

One of Sci-Fi Channel's worst

[slayrrr666 · 7/10 · 19 June 2006]

"Raptor Island" isn't as good as it could've been.

**SPOILERS**

Trying to capture the wanted terrorist Azir, (Steven Bauer), Navy SEAL Hacket, (Lorenzo Lamas) sneak on board and interrupt a weapons deal, forcing him to escape with hostage Jamie Cole, (Hayley DuMond) to an uncharted island. Hacket and his team follow suit, and are able to free Jamie from Azir's clutches. Still determined to bring him down, they follow Azir inland, where they find Dinosaurs running loose on the island. Trying to stay alive from their repeated attacks, the team tracks back to survive the dinosaurs and get Azir back to their headquarters.

The Good News: While I do want to bash this movie, there are some good things about it. The underground caves in here are pretty spooky, and give off a nice atmosphere. The low-lighting to them gives the ambiance even more credibility, and it's got some of the best scenes in the film. A real highlight, as well as the closing solution to the problem. Yet, it's pretty predictable, but it deliver the action when needed. It's a great way to end the movie, on a real high note. The film has a rapid pace to it, so it really goes by quite fast. The continuous action doesn't hurt matters, and makes it a nice stream of action sequences that don't really let up. This is about it though.

The Bad News: This is were most of the review goes. Gone is all forms of logic or explanation for anything in the film. We never get any explanation to where the Dino DNA came from to be mutated from, much less how they were able to survive on an island for that determined amount of time without any food. Why do Raptors, some of the smartest Dinosaurs, act as though they are incredibly slow-witted? So many times they simply stand still, absorbing the blows from the fighters and the only thing they do is take it. They stand around getting shot, and the only time they manage to move is when they finally run out of ammo or they decide to attack. It's nonsensical for the creatures to be acting like this, especially since they were said to be so intelligent. Why they would act in such a manner doesn't make any sense. They don't appear threatening, and they appear to be pretty unintelligent. That handles the logic aspect of the film, which doesn't include the other parts of the film. The creatures are not only bad actors, they look just as bad. This is some of the worst digital effects to ever disgrace a movie cell. It is laughable how bad these look compared to their counter creatures from "Jurassic Park" that it's often hard to think of the two as having come from the same source. There's a lot more with this, but it's hard to remember all of it, but just know that it really failed when it could've been a cheesy throwback to the early creature features of the 50s.

The Final Verdict: It could've been a throwback to the cheesy films of the 50s, but it really isn't that. It does have some okay moments, but it's only for the hardcore fans of the Sci-Fi Channel's films or the ones who have to see every Dinosaur movie ever made.

Rated R: Violence and Graphic Language

How Does a Film This Bad Get on Television?

[gavin6942 · 2/10 · 27 February 2008]

Decades ago, a crate filled with weapons grade plutonium crashes on an island and soaks into the ground. Today, a team of military men are sent to track down a notorious terrorist (of ambiguous national origin) and they track him to this polluted island. When their raft is destroyed, the team must spend the night on shore, but soon discover that the plutonium has done something awful to the island -- it has called forth hundreds of bloodthirsty velociraptors.

Let me start this with a lesson: don't lend a movie to your friend before you've seen it, especially if you are supposed to be reviewing it for the internet's finest horror movie site. It took me almost a year to get this film back, and the person who borrowed it still had not watched it (though we ended up seeing it together). And a second, more important, lesson: when you do watch this, keep your expectations as low as humanly possible. Because this film ranks among the worst I've ever seen.

My acting in 8th grade was more convincing than the seasoned actors who appear in this film (Lorenzo Lamas, Stephen Bauer). Line delivery is very fake, and the words themselves are poorly scripted. The opening words come from a man checking out his gun's scope: "Boom. Dead bad guys." Yes, that's pure genius at work. The only conversation with any depth has two main characters explaining their histories. But it, too, seems unnatural and a poor attempt to provide character background and to fill time. We didn't need to know anything about their histories, so why bore us with it? And if you think the conversations are bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The lighting is atrocious. I generally don't notice lighting, but my friend (a former film school student) was practically vomiting in rage at the way more often than not shadows fell on the actors' faces and the light would be in the background, focused on nothing in particular. Most lighting looks like a spotlight in a dim room, and many of the scenes involve a deep, subterranean cavern -- which you'd then expect to be poorly lit, but had lights coming from all sorts of random angles. Don't ask me why.

The plot was pretty bad. Some films can take the idea of military men chasing a terrorist and make a convincing film out of it. Cat and mouse stories are riveting. Well, not here. The terrorist is really not even part of the story, just an excuse to go to the island. And the raptors? And the allosaurus? Sure, they came from the plutonium that soaked into the ground. But if that makes sense to you, please explain it to me because I have no clue how radiation brings dinosaurs back from millions of years of extinction.

By far the worst part of "Raptor Island" is the animation of the raptors. That's right -- the selling point of the film is the worst aspect. The animation isn't just bad, it's subpar. I can't even express the hilarity of cartoons this cheesy. And when they get shot? Red splats like one would see in an old video game. Even the airplane, helicopter and Navy ship are cartoons... how hard is it to get a model plane? Please don't see "Raptor Island" unless you need a good laugh or want to get sickeningly drunk. Sure, you probably want to see it before you see "Raptor Island 2" (which seems to be getting better reviews). But just avoiding it entirely is your best bet. The closest thing I can compare it to is "Pinata: Survival Island", and unfortunately this film makes the pinata look good by comparison. You have been warned.