Carnosaur 2 (1995) Review

Carnosaur 2 (1995) Review

At the conclusion of the first Carnosaur, all the dinosaurs are dead, and the main characters are shot and set ablaze, so you may be wondering how Carnosaur 2 can follow that up. Why, just have new characters with an unrelated storyline in an unrelated setting, of course. So even though it’s billed as a sequel, it basically has nothing to do with the original. 

While the first Carnosaur mostly just ripped off Jurassic Park, Carnosaur 2 has no shame in ripping off several films. Clearly the filmmakers enjoyed the likes of Aliens, Predator, Terminator 2, and Apocalypse Now, because they are referenced in not-such-subtle ways, and in the case of Aliens, the plot is copied beat for beat. It would be easy to say you’ve already seen Carnosaur 2 if you’ve seen Aliens, and it would be true. But, in comparison to Aliens, Carnosaur 2 is (unsurprisingly) much lower budget, much more poorly executed, and filled with rubber dinosaurs killing people instead of xenomorphs. And it’s great.  

A secret base at Yucca Mountain in the middle of the desert is attacked by dinosaurs, so a special operations team is sent in to figure out what happened. They become stranded when the helicopter crashes, and along with a lone survivor, must fight to survive. If that sounds familiar, that’s because you’ve seen Aliens. Multiple elements are copied, right down to a final battle between the T. rex and a forklift, just like the Queen alien and power loader. They even recycle footage of the T. rex getting killed from the final battle in Carnosaur. Even though it’s easy to tell, it doesn’t come off as lazy as it sounds, and there’s still enough new footage of dinosaurs eating people to be satisfactory.

Unlike the first movie, the dinosaurs aren’t shown early on. Instead, we only see from their perspective as they kill people, but then as it goes on, we get to see more carnage. The effects are even worse, likely due to the movie being a direct-to-video release. Whereas the raptor looked like a muppet before, now it’s clearly a guy in a suit, though arguably a bit better designed. We don’t get to see as much of the dinosaurs throughout as with the first movie, but still enough times to satisfy. 

To sum up, if you liked the first Carnosaur, you’ll probably like Carnosaur 2. Believe it or not, they actually made another one, Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, which has soldiers running from the dinosaurs again. It’s just more of the same, except lacking the fun of the first two. I don’t really have much else to say about it. There was even two unofficial spin-offs, Raptor and The Eden Formula, which recycled footage from the Carnosaur films. Like Carnosaur 3, neither of these are worth reviewing.