# The Dinosaur Project

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Entity type: review
Last modified: 2026-10-21T05:54:37+00:00
Content type: movies
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## Description

There are only so many haunted houses, possessed videotapes and things lurking just outside a night-vision camera that found-footage cinema can throw at us before the formula starts to creak. The Dinosaur Project has a rather good answer: forget the ghosts and head into the Congo looking for something with considerably bigger teeth. It sounds daft on paper, perhaps, but it is a welcome change of scenery, and one we enjoyed far more than its reputation might suggest. Sid Bennett's film follows explorer Jonathan Marchant (Richard Dillane) and his team as they search for the legendary Mokele-mbembe. A camera crew is along for the journey, as is Jonathan's son Luke (Matt Kane), who has stowed away with enough recording equipment to document every awkward family conversation. Once the expedition goes spectacularly wrong, all those cameras give the film a believable reason to keep recording. For once, the question of why nobody has put the camera down is not quite so distracting. The real pleasure, though, is the setting. The jungle begins as the sort of place you might recognise from a conventional expedition film, before gradually feeling like a world cut off from everything outside it. We liked that suggestion of a hidden ecosystem, somewhere the familiar rules no longer quite apply. It gives the adventure a genuine sense of discovery even when there is no dinosaur on screen, and makes the surroundings part of the attraction rather than merely somewhere for the cast to run about. A mild spoiler for one particularly enjoyable sequence: a small dinosaur, nicknamed Crypto, ends up carrying a camera into the water and towards a submerged passage. The resulting journey hints at another environment tucked away beyond the obvious routes through the jungle. That moment stuck with us. It is the sort of imaginative detail that helps a modest production feel more adventurous than a succession of computer-generated attacks ever could. And yes, there are actual dinosaurs. They do not appear every five minutes, and anyone expecting an endless parade of prehistoric creatures will find the film rather restrained. We appreciated that. When they turn up, the effects are generally respectable for a production working on this scale, even if the occasional shot shows its limitations. Pushing them into every scene would probably have done the film no favours. Sometimes the threat of what might be nearby is enough to keep the expedition moving. The performances are a mixed bag, although not in a way that wrecked our enjoyment. Peter Brooke makes Charlie Rutherford interesting to watch, while Kane brings a useful energy to Luke and Natasha Loring makes an impression as Liz Draper. Other moments are less convincing, and bits of dialogue could certainly have used another pass. Still, the relationships give us something to follow between creature encounters, and the story is easy to keep track of without constantly abandoning ideas it has introduced. The Dinosaur Project is unlikely to convert somebody who cannot stand shaky cameras or the usual found-footage conventions. But we have a soft spot for it. It knows roughly what sort of adventure it can afford to be, offers a few memorable discoveries and remains an easy, enjoyable watch. Not a lost masterpiece, then. Just a rather likeable little dinosaur film that deserves a fairer chance.

## Image

https://planetofthecapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/qmMoPP8hSFbxzLn3Tt9UonPsma9.jpg.webp

## Short Description

A little gem for any fans of the POV/Found Footage genre! When a disastrous journey leaves its crew stranded in the jungle the cameras capture something far stranger than folklore: surviving prehistoric creatures, an unforgiving jungle and a discovery that could change everything.

## Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDiVFbqtF6w