Pterodactyl: D

Pterodactyl is ptero-terrible but I was entertained during most of the movie.

Some scientists/students on a field trip meet some terrorist-hunting Marines in the woods in rural Turkey and all of a sudden, pterodactyls start eating everyone! How’s that for a plot, asshole?

The CGI looks like PS1 but who cares; if you sit down to watch this movie, you know what you are getting yourself into. This movie was made during a unique window of time in which CGI in horror films was just god-awful and Sharknado had not been made yet. Bad movies with post-Sharknado era self-awareness that are “so bad, they’re good”  were not being mass produced for mainstream audiences, so any movies like Pterodactyl that didn’t take itself seriously wasn’t doing so because the filmmakers thought they would get paid. It was because the movie was a piece of shit and/or no one cared. This is part of why I don’t hate this movie: I don’t feel like it not taking itself seriously is a gimmick being sold to me.

Anyway, if you were hoping for something at all like Jurassic Park, prepare to watch that hope get eviscerated by a pterodactyl. Check this out: Coolio plays one of the soldiers! His only role in the film is to blast shit with automatic weapons and deliver one-liners. When the terrorist ringleader gets dropped into the dactyl nest at the end, Coolio lowers the assault rifles he holds in each hand and quips “Damn! Judgement by dinosaur!” while the dactyl babies tear the guy up.

There is a plot worse than most video games’ and a lot of guns, dinosaurs, and carnage. The movie didn’t age well. Don’t watch it unless you love Coolio or you have brain damage or both.