The Jurassic Games: Extinction Review

Anyone can make a B movie. Not everyone can make an enjoyable, let alone halfway decent B movie. Take The Jurassic Games: Extinction, for example. In this sequel to 2018's The Jurassic Games (but you definitely already knew that), director Ryan Bellgardt essentially rewrites Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race remake, swapping vehicular manslaughter for prehistoric carnage. Or think The Condemned, but instead of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin punching Vinnie Jones, he's zipping away from T. rexes on hover scooters. The script is bananas and skimps on exposition because that's not what you're watching The Jurassic Games for, but in terms of delivering what's promised by its title and trailer? Bellgardt earns points for pushing the concept of a dystopian reality show where death-row inmates participate in VR dino bloodsport as far as possible, taking it from Romanesque gladiatorial stages to Capture the Flag-versus-raptors and beyond.

Just don’t expect anything more than unintentional late-night-cable laughs. Nine times out of ten, title-first genre films like Clownado (Sharknado with clowns, but worse) or The VelociPastor (a cheapo “kick-ass pastor turns into velociraptor” dud) can’t deliver what’s on the label, but The Jurassic Games: Extinction is fearless by comparison. Bellgardt doesn’t cheat us out of dino time, and that earns his movie a valuable dose of goodwill.

Of course, Extinction’s dinosaurs aren't trying to outdo their counterparts in the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth. (Surely it’s a coincidence that this movie and its predecessor were released within days of new Jurassic World movies.) Don't expect anything practical – there's no Stan Winston magic here – but it's passable enough for an indie science-fiction thriller that animates entire alternate realities filled with Carnotauruses, Stegosauruses, and many other creatures of the Mesozoic Era. There's a video game touch to much of The Jurassic Games: Extinction that can't match the graphics of current PlayStation or Xbox processors, and yet I've seen far worse effects flipping past Syfy after midnight. When he’s not directing, Bellgardt is a VFX artist, and what he and the team he supervised for Extinction may have lacked in resources, they more than make up for in the volume of dinosaurs onscreen.

The Jurassic Games: Extinction is a direct continuation of The Jurassic Games, so you may want to plan a double feature if Extinction tickles your fancy. The hero and the villain carry over from the first movie: Tucker (Adam Hampton) is a Jurassic Games survivor turned cyber-mercenary bent on destroying the games – which are now under the control of his rival, Jo LaFort (Katie Burgess) – from within. They’re thrust into a tangle of wishy-washy storylines involving a rogue AI, the beta testers it “kidnaps” and forces to compete in The Jurassic Games, and LaFort’s maniacal quest to deliver another memorable broadcast in spite of these mishaps and Tucker’s sabotage.

It’s about how the pursuit of fame or virality can short-circuit anyone’s ethics and morals, but The Jurassic Games: Extinction doesn’t have anything prophetic or profound to say on the subject. Staging live executions for TV ratings is bad, and AI can’t be trusted – yup, I knew that long before I pressed “play.” Surprise guests are pulled into the games, but touches like holding Tucker’s son hostage to keep his dad in line hardly translate into an emotional tour de force. Meanwhile, Bellgardt recycles stock material about artificial intelligence turning against its creators and a future society that hungers for murdertainment. Everything else is a messy grab bag: a shoehorned-in character has tamed a pack of velociraptors and rides them like he’s Mario and they’re Yoshi; deaths and "shocking" reveals land with a thud.

But all of this is secondary to the human-on-dino (and dino-on-dino) action, and that’s another area where Bellgardt doesn't let a small budget bring him down. Powerups are introduced that allow players to transform into dinosaurs, and these virtual Animorphs moments are visualized with the help of an Iron Man-esque heads-up display. The battlegrounds include coliseum arenas, Endor-like forests, and geometric realms that call to mind a laser-guided-raptor-infested version of Tron. Bellgardt gets creative and chaotic with his superpowered games and, most of all, lets there be plenty of combat. It’s trash, but at least it’s trash where a hotshot swordsman parries and slices through pixelated raptors while trying to navigate an ’80s retro-futurist maze.