Nerdly » ‘Jurassic Triangle’ VOD Review

21st Feb2024

‘Jurassic Triangle’ VOD Review

by Jim Morazzini

Stars: Darrell Griggs, Toby Redpath, Sian Altman, Rob Kirtley, Connor Powles, Chrissie Wunna, Dorothea Jones | Written by Harry Boxley | Directed by Victor De Almeida

We’re barely seconds into Jurassic Triangle when three nameless individuals run past something odd, a pile of logs, a tarp and what looks like a gas-powered garden tiller. Why would that be odd? Because they’re trapped on an uncharted island that’s overrun with dinosaurs and other strange creatures, not the kind of place you can run off to Peavy Mart for some gardening supplies, or hang around long enough to plant a garden for that matter.

The hapless trio quickly become dinner for the dinos, and we cut to Drew (Darrell Griggs; Looks Can Kill, The Viking War) is waking up from a nightmare and remembering he’s on a helicopter with Issac (Toby Redpath; M, The Bench), Beth (Sian Altman; The Curse of Humpty Dumpty, Wolf Garden) and their pilot Captain “Call me Andy” Rawson (Rob Kirtley; The Loch Ness Horror, The Gardener).

It’s one of two choppers carrying corporate types to a team-building retreat somewhere in the Caribbean. Jason (Connor Powles; Medusa’s Venom, Mega Lightning 2) and Phillipa (Chrissie Wunna; Freddy’s Fridays, Snake Hotel) are on that one. Jenny, Miss Carlyle if you’re nasty, (Dorothea Jones; Horror-Scopes: Volume Two, Organs of Business) is the pilot.

The choppers run into some turbulence and crash in what looks more like the English countryside than anything tropical. But that’s the least of their worries as the island’s large, and hungry, inhabitants soon make themselves known.

As if the garden tiller wasn’t enough proof, scenes of what appears to be helicopters stolen off of an amusement park carousel and the same couple of minutes worth of screams played in an eternal loop, confirm watching Jurassic Triangle is not going to be a good time. Granted, I should have guessed that the moment I saw Proportion Productions in the opening credits.

If you’ve seen any of their other CGI monster films, then you’ll recognize the various prehistoric creatures both by the recycled CGI templates and their overall lack of reality. For good measure, whatever it was from Monster Portal shows up as well, this time with the ability to emit screams that make people explode.

But before we get to them, director Victor De Almeida (The Ashes You Leave Behind, Persephone) and writer Harry Boxley (Dinosaur Hotel 3, Mary Had a Little Lamb) subject us to plenty of wandering around in the woods, mysterious growls and unintentionally hysterical moments like characters finding coconuts littering the ground in this decidedly nontropical location.

Eventually they run into other survivors, a trio of mercenaries who have a way off the island but need a pilot. Will any of them make it back to civilization? Do you care? At that point I certainly didn’t, I just wanted it over, but I still had to suffer through a ludicrous revelation and a craptacular ending that thinks it’s a lot more shocking than it actually is.

While the CGI creatures are terrible, as are some of the computer-generated death scenes, such as a head being bitten off, there are a couple of effective moments and a nasty-looking broken leg that’s a practical effect. Better effects alone couldn’t have saved Jurassic Triangle. But they might have distracted from the noticeable gaffes that they couldn’t be bothered to edit out and a script that just seems to be thrown together enough to make the film a lot less painful to sit through.

Alternatively, they could have leaned into the weak effects and other problems and tried to play it all for laughs. Between the coconut scene and the character who just dies for no apparent reason, boredom perhaps, simply to let one of the actresses have a horribly acted meltdown scene Jurassic Triangle might have achieved so bad its good status. Instead, they simply slapped it together as quickly and cheaply as possible, and like most of their films, the results are dire.