If you wanna make a movie that will get my attention every time, make dinosaurs the focus. Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park came out when I was thirteen and changed my life forever, just as it did for millions of others. I’ve been game for every sequel too, no matter how mediocre most have been. Dinosaurs don’t have to be at the center of a serious monster movie either. Sillier fare such as Tammy and the T-Rexand the infamous The VelociPastor are absurd good times, and in that vein comes another dino comedy sure to become a cult sensation. Starring Mike Capes and David Shackelford, director Mike Hermosa’s The Invisible Raptor is about, yes, you guessed it, an invisible velociraptor. It’s that smart kind of dumb fun that doesn’t always work, but when it does, it leaves you grateful that great comedies aren’t dead. There might be bigger films coming out right now, but a new movie monster has been born…even if you can’t see it.

What Is ‘The Invisible Raptor’ About?

The Invisible Raptor opens in an underground lab, the Tyler Corp Research & Development Gentech Laboratory, with Sean Astin as one of the white-coated scientists hovering over their computers. On the other side of the room is a small cell where it’s quickly revealed that a genetically created invisible velociraptor waits inside. As we learned from Jurassic Park, velociraptors are so smart they can open doors. That’s nothing. This one even knows how to use keys, and is intelligent enough after it escapes to rip out a poor guy’s eyeball so it can scan it on the lock to let itself out of the lab.

Once out in public, it runs amok, as an invisible velociraptor is gonna do. Who’s going to stop it, especially when the lab doesn’t even know the dinosaur has escaped, being that they can’t see it and all? Sean Astin might be the big name in this film, but it’s Mike Capes’ Dr. Grant Williams who is our hero. Capes, who co-wrote (with Johnny Wickham) and produced The Invisible Raptor, is one of the highlights of the movie, playing it straight as a once celebrated paleontologist who discovered the first fully preserved fossil of a dinosaur butthole (yeah, that’s right), only to have his partner take credit for everything. After losing it all, Grant now works at a kid’s dinosaur-themed park, DinoWorld, as a down-and-out guy who no longer trusts anyone. It doesn’t help matters when his ex-girlfriend, Amber (Caitlin McHugh), happens to show up with her daughter. Capes reminded me of a restrained Ryan Reynolds, to the point that if you close your eyes, he even sounds just like him.

Grant’s only friend is the dimwit DinoWorld security guard, Denny (Jim Shackleford), a man so dumb you wonder how he functions, but he believes in Grant when no one else does. So, when Grant discovers that there is an invisible velociraptor on the loose, it’s up to him, Denny, and Amber to save the day.

Grant and Denny Are a Great Horror Comedy Duo

The Insivible Raptor is not played too seriously. That’s a good thing. Such a concept can’t be, and Capes and company thankfully know that. Imagine a Jurassic World sequel where the plot involved invisible dinosaurs. We’d be laughing when they didn’t want us to. The Invisible Raptor knows they have a funny concept and leans into it, but smartly. It’s not trying to be one of those movies that’s so bad you laugh. Forget Sharknado and everything similar, because this isn’t it. The Invisible Raptor tries. Sure, there may be a few too many scenes of bad exploding head visuals, but there are also a lot of unique low-budget effects, such as a victim having their arms and legs ripped off one by one and then hovering in the air as they’re eaten by an invisible force.

An invisible dinosaur concept still only goes so far, and it would quickly run out of steam if it wasn’t for the characters. As silly as the idea is, it’s the duo of Grant and Denny that are worth staying for. They are what Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon were to Tremors. Am I comparing The Invisible Raptor to that 90s monster comedy classic? Not quite. But while this movie lacks those scares, it’s still on the right path. Grant and Denny sell the hell out of it, with Grant desperately not wanting to kill the raptor, but to catch it. Not only will this save his career, but it will save a miracle. He’s just as much in awe of the raptor’s existence as he is afraid of it.

Related Steven Spielberg Playfully Parodied His Iconic ‘Jaws’ Opening Scene in This War Comedy Aside from their opening scenes, the two movies had little else in common.

Denny is the perfect sidekick and the source of the biggest laughs. He’s a simpleton, but a lovable one with a big heart. There is a scene with Denny where the comedic aspects go away for a minute, and a visual reveal about him is probably the funniest gag of the whole movie. Denny has a sidesplitting one-liner for every incident, which sometimes can be a flaw, as some of the jokes fall flat by simply trying too hard. The Invisible Raptor, which runs at 1 hour and 54 minutes, would have been better off removing a good twenty minutes of runtime, as parts of the second and third acts drag with one too many poop and butt jokes. Still, if the worst thing I can say about The Invisible Raptor is that it sometimes goes overboard on the humor, that’s not so bad.

‘The Invisible Raptor’ Is a Love Letter to Steven Spielberg
Image via Well Go USA

As stupidly funny as The Invisible Raptor is, it’s also a loving tribute to Steven Spielberg, and I seriously hope the director gets a chance to see it. While it’s not a lazy spoof of his movies, there are winks to his filmography all over the place. Dr. Grant Walker is named after Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. He dresses just like him and has the same affinity for raptors. In the DinoWorld scenes, the score even resembles John Williams’ famous soundtrack. Then there’s the fact that Amber is a nod to the amber that the Jurassic Park mosquito is found in. The Jurassic Park Easter eggs are so deep that we get a cameo from Vanessa Chester during a party scene. The actress played the daughter of Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and goes so far as to recreate one of her lines from it.

There are also nods to other Spielberg masterpieces, such as Jaws and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. One scene has a young boy, fittingly named Elliot Kintner (Luke Speakman), after Henry Thomas’ character in E.T. and the poor kid who gets eaten by the shark in Jaws. Instead of shooting the raptor with a barrel to track it like in Jaws, Denny has the bright idea to shoot it with a small helium birthday balloon, leading to scenes of a hovering balloon ripping people apart. The biggest nod to Jaws is the ending, with a similar finale that bows to the Hollywood icon without ripping him off.

The Invisible Raptor is one of the best horror comedies I’ve seen in the last few years, one filled not only with funny gags, but great characters, and plenty of tributes to the king of blockbusters. Still, it creates its own original monster and relishes in it. After all, did Spielberg ever make a movie where an old woman in a chicken suit is being humped by an invisible raptor? I think not.

The Invisible Raptor comes to theaters in the U.S. on December 6.

An outlandish concept is held together by some hilarious one-liners in a loving tribute to Steven Spielberg.ProsIt’s a silly gimmick that doesn’t make a joke out of itself.It shows love for Steven Spielberg in the funniest of ways.The two leads create one of the better duos in recent memory. ConsTwenty minutes could have been removed from a plot that begins to drag.Some of the jokes try too hard wih the same material used over and over.

Release Date December 6, 2024 Director Mike Hermosa Cast Mike Capes , Caitlin McHugh , David Shackelford , Sean Astin , Sandy Martin , Bobby Gilchrist , Richard Riehle , Larry Hankin , David Theune , Bill Kottkamp , Vanessa Lee Chester , J.J. Nolan , Linda Eve Miller , Luke Speakman , Grace Demarco , Derek Alvarado , Bunny Levine , Kelly Murtagh , Tim Soergel , Evan Michael Pinsonnault , Angie Stevenson , David Sargsyan , José Luis Oyola , Chad Bullard , Sam Skolnik , Kai To Runtime 113 Minutes Expand

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