I tend to enjoy found footage films, at least some of them. However, this new The Dinosaur Project presents so much that I find wrong with the technique.
The story follows a group that heads into the Congo to film a documentary, but everyone eventually goes missing. Once the footage they shot is found it reveals that dinosaurs are actually still roaming the Earth 65 million years later.
From the opening moments of the trailer I’m already annoyed by this movie as it features one of those talking to the camera moments that has yet to match the level of authenticity delivered by Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project. But forget that for a second, or the part at the end of the trailer where he asks the camera if there is anyone out there, what about the fact this film is trying to convince us there are actually dinosaurs out in the wild, that have been living there for over 65 million years and have confined themselves to a small, 132,047 square mile piece of land and we didn’t know about it until a group of idiots wandered into the jungle and found them?
While I continued to watch ABC’s “The River”, frustrated by what I was watching, the same thing bothered me when the jungle shifted and moved, rerouting the group along the water. We’re living in an age where people are finding giant smiley faces on rooftops while searching for a Ruby Tuesday’s, do we really think dinosaurs and shifting land masses will be able to avoid detection?
I know, most movies will fail under such scrutiny, but the found footage feature is supposed to be scary because it’s supposed to feel real. It asks us to look at it this way because once you can’t explain it you may actually begin to believe it. Watch the trailer below, are you a believer?
