An amusement park paleontologist and a hapless security guard team up to stop an invisible raptor from wreaking havoc on their small town.An amusement park paleontologist and a hapless security guard team up to stop an invisible raptor from wreaking havoc on their small town.An amusement park paleontologist and a hapless security guard team up to stop an invisible raptor from wreaking havoc on their small town.
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- (as Kelly Murtagh)
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The plot-such as it exists-is hilariously absurd, with characters so exaggerated they might as well be caricatures. The acting is gloriously campy, with everyone from Sean Astin to Richard Riehle fully embracing the ridiculousness. And those cameos! Bunny Levine and Larry Hankin? Pure gold. Each performance feels like the actors are in on the joke, which makes their scenes all the more delightful.
While the humor is unapologetically dumb and juvenile, it's also strangely endearing. It feels like the filmmakers weren't just trying to entertain us but were also having a blast themselves. The special effects, while not groundbreaking, are surprisingly polished for a movie of this type. One particular scene (you'll know it when you see it) features genuinely impressive cinematography that momentarily tricks you into thinking you're watching a much higher-budget production.
But what really sells the movie is its self-awareness. Hermosa leans all the way into the absurd premise without ever apologizing for it. The result? A film that doesn't take itself too seriously and dares its audience to sit back, relax, and have a great time.
The Invisible Raptor isn't trying to reinvent cinema or win awards. It's a love letter to camp, to creature features, and to the kind of movies you watch with a group of friends while quoting lines and laughing your head off. For fans of B-movies, it's a must-watch. For everyone else? Well, you probably weren't the target audience anyway.
Rating: 7/10 Recommended for: B-movie enthusiasts, fans of campy humor, and anyone who enjoys watching dinosaurs wreak havoc... invisibly.
The 'invisible' action figure used to promote The Invisible Raptor is a stroke of genius, far smarter than anything in the actual movie. As the title suggests, the film is intentionally dumb, but sadly the majority of the humour is incredibly weak, leaving it up to the cartoonish splatter to do the heavy lifting. The gore, when it happens (mostly in the second half of the film), is a lot of fun, a mixture of practical and CGI (an unnecessary evil when dealing with an invisible creature tearing people apart); the sight of people having their limbs removed by the titular dinosaur makes the film just about worthwhile, the effects being surprisingly effective for such a low budget production.
Also, this is the only film I know of that you can see an old woman in a chicken costume being rogered by an invisible dinosaur, so there's that!
5.5/10, rounded down to 5 for the runtime of almost two hours, which is waaay too long for this kind of nonsense.
This was a fairly fun if problematic feature. One of the bigger features here is the general setup that provides the kind of wild genre fare it feels quite engaged to provide. The idea of the dinosaur getting loose during the series of tests being conducted by a government agency trying to determine the effectiveness of such a weapon by the military and the ensuing rampage that occurs afterward makes for a solid enough starting point. It gets to the point about what the creature is, how intelligent it actually is, and how it gets free while also managing to give a great starting point for introducing the wild and wacky series of characters in the town where we get to meet the heroes at the Theme Park, the ex-flame, and the crazy local that believes their story who band together to use their skills to track the creature down. This gives the film a strong and intriguing starting point with a couple of great pieces to start the investigation into the creature. The second half here, featuring the series of encounters and confrontations with the creature and the crew trying to stop it, manages to bring together a lot of fun aspects. Going with some outright silly aspects involving the goofy tracking techniques, slapstick humor involving the personalities on display conflicting with each other, and a slew of random characters introduced not just to provide some laughs with their one-liners but their eventual death after encountering the creature, there's plenty of fun throughout here. The graphic kills being accomplished with stand-out sequences feature a lot to like, which is exactly the same as the effects used to bring the creature to life and interact with the environment to play up its invisible status, which all come together with the high-energy action on display here to make for a lot to like overall. There are some big problems here that hold it back. The main issue here is the fact that this one is such an ungodly length for the type of material present that it threatens to wear out its welcome rather early. There's little reason why this should be more than ninety minutes much less approach two hours the way this does, especially with the amount of characters or side tangents this goes on simply to get a laugh as that comes at the expense of dragging this one out far longer. Excessively going for the joke rather than trying to present the storyline more straightforwardly with so many scenes like the opening escape from the lab, the gags at the Theme Park, or the implications of the sheriff about what's really going on which all serve their appropriate laughs but just don't need to be as indulgent as they are. The other factor to be had with this one is the goofy premise never going for the kind of over-the-top wildness it seems set up to employ. The idea of the creature being invisible is a great gimmick that gets a lot of fun moments to shine but it soon grows so weary that you can't see the creature in full. Not knowing what it looks like or where the creature is comes off like a massive cheat to simply put it anywhere they want and the satisfaction of trying to make the scenes make sense is lost without the ability to tell what's going on that it happens simply because of the appearance of the creature kept under wraps for the gimmick to play out. It's somewhat underwhelming to keep getting denied and everything playing out the way it does is the main cause of that, holding this one back for what it is.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, and Brief Nudity.
Did you know
- TriviaVanessa Chester previously played the daughter of Jeff Goldblum's character, Ian Malcolm, in 1997's Jurassic Park: The Lost World. In Jurassic Park: The Lost World, she gets the attention of a raptor by saying: "Hey, you!", right before using her gymnastics skills to kick the raptor out of a window. In this film, she plays the DJ at the house party and her only line is: "Hey, you! Let's kick it!"
- GoofsWhen the three of them are "carrying" the invisible raptor to the car, they are not moving with each other, and keep changing their positions, which wouldn't happen if they were really carrying something.
- Quotes
Dr. Grant Walker: Your bad? You just let it loose again! You... muddy, redneck idiot!
Deniel 'Denny' Denielson: Whoa, now, Dr. G. That's no way to talk to a friend.
Dr. Grant Walker: Friends? We're not friends. We're not even work friends. This isn't hanging out, you moron. All you had to do was drive it to the jail. Now it is going to kill more people.
[points at Dusty's body]
Dr. Grant Walker: That man is a stump!
Deniel 'Denny' Denielson: You're the one that wanted to let it take a nap because of your scientific discoveries.
Dr. Grant Walker: Oh...
Deniel 'Denny' Denielson: I told you we should have killed it. Now, Dusty Peter's hot-ass wife is a widow!
Dr. Grant Walker: Oh, no. On, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This blood is on *your* hands. And you did all this because someone saw your dick in the sixth grade? Unbelievable!
- Crazy creditsAfter all of the credits are done, Willie wakes up from the desk.
- ConnectionsReferences Gremlins (1984)
Details
- Release date
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- Also known as
- Невидимозавр
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- Runtime1 hour 55 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1