THE DINOSAUR PROJECT

Explorer Jonathan Marchant leads a British Cryptozoological Society expedition in Africa to search for the so-called Mokele Mbembe, a legendary aquatic monster that, according to local legends, would roam a lake in the Congo. Marchant assembles a team in which his fifteen-year-old son Luke secretly infiltrates, a boy a bit too lively who has just been expelled from school. The expedition, however, does not begin in the best way and the helicopter carrying the team crashes in the middle of the jungle due to some strange and giant birds. The survivors of the impact venture into the heart of the Congo, ready to film everything with their remaining equipment, discovering that in that corner of the world prehistoric beings have survived, ready to make their survival difficult. Witch? Present. Demons? Present. Ghosts? Present. Aliens? Present. Serial killer? Present. Zombies? Present. Kids with superpowers? Present. Who —or what— is missing from the roll call to appear in a mockumentary of the found footage type? Dinosaurs, perhaps… No worries, documentarian Sid Bennett writes and directs "The Lost Dinosaurs" bringing his passion for cryptozoology to the stage. Imagine "Jurassic Park", or rather "Jurassic Park III" —which is more relevant to the plot— and combine it with "The Blair Witch Project" (the original title of the film is "The Dinosaur Project"), although the greatest influence perhaps comes from "The River", the TV series created by Oren Peli and concluded in a single season. You will thus have "The Lost Dinosaurs", a nice little summer film that in its mixing of more elements turns out to be enjoyable and paradoxically original. In Bennett's film we find the abc of screenwriting with some choices that will inevitably seem banal, such as the conflict between father and son, in which the latter, in addition to being the miniature copy of the parent who sees in him all the mistakes made in his youth and is therefore ready to prevent them, is immediately presented to us as an expert in technologies, thus facilitating many future plot points. But all this can be fine, just as the ecological subtext and the complicity that is created between Luke and a baby Dilophosaurus, promptly baptized Crypto and necessary for the film's epilogue, do not hinder. Meritorious some choices regarding the fate of the characters, rather unexpected, while what could disturb is the introduction of a human villain, the usual expedient to focus attention on the meanness of man that here seems even more forced than usual. You will therefore understand that, despite its desire to be "something else" given the technique of the fake documentary, "The Lost Dinosaurs" ends up being a film very close to the standard of the horror/adventure spectacle, making its own the lesson of Spielberg's saga on dinosaurs. But that's fine, a film that travels safely and knows how to entertain and amuse, thanks to a quick vision (the film lasts only 80 minutes) and a simple but engaging plot. There is a good variety of dinosaurs in "The Lost Dinosaurs" that deviate from the usual T-Rex and Velociraptor that the various "Jurassic Park" (and not only) have offered us over the years. Rather, flying reptiles (two different varieties) are used, a nice plesiosaur that splashes in the gorge of a canyon and then carnivores of various sizes and voracity, all realized rather well, even if the fake-amateur editing and the "dirty" rendering of the mockumentary help to mask the visual effect. Speaking of mockumentary, "The Lost Dinosaurs" uses the expedient of filming at all costs in a functional way, given the scientific/documentary purposes of the mission, which at a certain point also assume other objectives. Excellent and innovative is the use of the GoPro camera that is fixed on a dinosaur, so as to have underwater and not only all subjective shots. The cut of "The Lost Dinosaurs" is, in any case, more adventurous than horror and although there are concessions to the scare on more than one occasion, the violence and the blood remain mostly out of frame. In short, entertainment without pretensions that works precisely for its simplicity at heart. In the current panorama of mockumentaries that recycle ideas and add numbers after the title, "The Lost Dinosaurs" is one of the freshest and most fun.