I watched Dinosaur Hotel because I am a simple man. Put simply: I like dinosaurs. And I like it when dinosaurs terrorize humans.
In this case, the dinosaurs are terrorizing a hotel full of women playing a game show where, essentially, the last person who doesn’t get eaten wins.
I won’t lie—there’s something about badly CGI-animated dinosaurs, ones that look like they were rendered on a ’90s Commodore Amiga, chomping on some humans. There’s a lot of screaming involved. And watching these women scream at such hilariously bad CGI dinosaurs? That never gets old.
The lead actress in this film is Chrissie Wunna, a bit of a Z-list celebrity in the UK. Her character, Sienna Woods, makes the mistake of bringing her two children to the Dinosaur Hotel. So not only are these dinosaurs terrorizing a bunch of women, but now children are involved. And if you know the pecking order of these movies, moms come first. Sorry, ladies—if you don’t have kids, you’re not making it out alive. I don’t make the rules. It’s just how these movies go.
Now, calling Dinosaur Hotel a B-movie is charitable. It’s more of a bottom of the bargain-bin movie, with almost no budget. But because it’s a British production, most of the cast are classically trained theater actors. That’s not to say they’re good—they’re not. No one could be, given the production quality. You could be Dame Judi Dench, and your performance still wouldn’t look good in this movie.
There’s also something about the women in this film that feels distinctly British. It’s hard to put my finger on, but they all have a certain look—the kind of look you only find in Britain. It’s that “standing outside a nightclub in freezing weather, barely wearing anything, struggling to walk in high heels after too many drinks, and about to do something embarrassing” aesthetic. That’s what every woman in this movie embodies. Except for the one older woman, who looks to be in her 50s—but I wouldn’t put her above freezing her ass off outside a nightclub even if she should know better.
Back to Chrissie Wunna—she’s the lead, and believe it or not, the two children in the movie are her real-life kids. She’s not a great actress, and the production does her no favors, but she has a way of getting lots of work. She’s been on Good Morning Britain and a bunch of reality TV shows. Admittedly, she’s very attractive and has a unique look you don’t often see in movies like this—she’s Burmese British, and in America, women of her background rarely get leading roles. So it’s nice to see her here. Even though she’s not great in this movie, I found her charismatic and charming, even in an incredibly trashy film.
At the end of the day, Dinosaur Hotel has a minuscule budget, wooden acting, and laughably bad effects—but it delivers exactly what it promises: terrified women being chased around a hotel. And that’s more than I can say for a lot of big-budget movies that promise the world but don’t give the audience what they want.
So, can I recommend Dinosaur Hotel in good conscience? No. But was it entertaining? Absolutely. And hey, at least all those theater actresses got paid, got a credit on their résumés, and gave us some unintentional laughs.
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